About Me:
Briefly, I’m a 31 year old graduate student at the University of Florida. I’m working on a PhD through the College of Medicine, in a program (unimaginatively) called the Interdiscplinary Program in Biomedical Sciences. I’m now in my fifth year of work (with a 4.0 GPA, I’m pleased to say…not that it matters) and have selected a lab.

Personal/Family:
I’ve been happily married for just over five years now to Emma Caplan, a resident in Family Medicine at UF. We have two cats — Keegan and Rory — and we have just recently added three new avian residents, in the form of three Plymouth Rock Barred chickens. We also have a new chinchilla resident, Tiger-Schmutz Feller-Heggestad-Caplan.

Academic/Professional:
I’m a member of the Yang lab (page not updated recently) in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

Prior to starting in the IDP, I worked for about a year and a half in the lab of Brad Fletcher as a technician and basic researcher. During my tenure in Brad’s lab, our focus became research on Sleeping Beauty (SB), a transposase active in mammalian cells. Specifically, we were working on using SB as a nonviral gene therapy vector, targeting endothelial cells. Most of my work consisted of making improvements to our plasmid system which resulted in a marked increase in efficiency. I also created a system we dubbed “Maleficent,” which combines SB and siRNA to generate stable, gene-specific knockdown cell lines. Ideally we would like to use the system to make knockout cell lines, but that will take further tweaking.

My undergraduate degree is in Microbiology and Cell Sciences from UF. I did research in Lonnie Ingram’s metabolic engineering laboratory, helping to improve his ethanologenic E. coli. I was pretty distracted and unfocused then, so I really got very little finished. I learned a lot though and certainly have benefited from the experience.

GnuPG Public Key
—–BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK—–
Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (MingW32)
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×3K6Z6/PUFlEZ86480M3PDj6Qyw1rqHYmLaJLe6pamtlcBNbQdQXJuZSBIZWdn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=SaQf
—–END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK—–