Implementing cervical cancer screening intervention for women living with HIV in Uganda and Zimbabwe

GIAHC Young Leaders

Qualitative data collection and analysis to develop implementation strategies for HPV DNA testing. Poster at IPVC 2023 on the impacts of COVID on existing cervical cancer screening programs

Acceptability Research on Integrated Point of Care Sexually Transmitted Infection (STI) Testing and Expedited Partner Therapy (EPT). Work with Wits RHI Clinical Center in South Africa

COVID-19 Contact Tracing

Development of CAR T-Cells to design therapeutics for pediatric acute myeloid leukemia

Cultured mouse embryonic stem cells with CRISPR-Cas9 targeted deletion of telomere binding/protection proteins to identify proteins that, upon deletion, activate the DNA Damage Response, lead to chromosomal fusions, and subsequent cell lethality.Technical Experience:o Mammalian cell culture (mouse embryonic stem cells, mouse embryonic fibroblasts)o Immunofluorescence, fluorescence in-situ hybridization, metaphase spreads to monitor the DNA Damage Responseo Bacterial cloning, lentivirus production, infection and transfection in mammalian cellso Western blots

Analyzed clinical information from Acute Myeloid Leukemia patients with minimal residual disease (MRD) to determine whether the number and intensity of chemotherapy cycles correlate with disease clearance. The goal was to identify effective treatment regiments for patients with MRD.

• Coordinated and facilitated pre-lab and lab sessions• Demonstrated molecular biology techniques (eg. qPCR, restriction enzyme digestion, DNA cloning, electroporation, gel electrophoresis)• Provided detailed explanations of lab procedures

Carried out a CRISPR-Cas9 lentiviral genetic screen with a focused gene pool to identify genes that are preferentially essential for cell cycle progression in glioblastoma stem cells versus in neural stem cells. Technical Experience: o Neural and Glioblastoma stem cell cultureo Gibson Cloning of sgRNA librarieso Production of and transduction with lentiviruses expressing sgRNA librarieso Fluorescence-Activated Cell Sorting (FACS) to monitor cell cycle progressiono Minipreps, PCR and Gel Electrophoresis

Analyzed “The Cancer Genome Atlas” (TCGA) Pan-Cancer gene expression data to determine variations in the expression of DNA Damage Response (DDR) genes relative to all other genes in normal and cancer tissues. Technical Experience: o R statistical software and Python to analyze large data setso Bio-statistical analysis to evaluate significance of findings

• Prepared and facilitated lab sessions• Explained and demonstrated biology and chemistry lab techniques (eg. Acid-base titration, gel electrophoresis, sterile growth technique for bacterial culture)• Actively provided advice and assistance to students in conducting experiments

Sequencing of cancer genomes has revealed defects in proofreading proteins, specifically DNA polymerase Epsilon (PolE), which in turn increases the risk of error-induced extinction. However, many cancer cells are able to survive by developing antimutator phenotypes. I carried out fluctuation assays to measure mutation rates in S. cerevisiae and identify clones with lower mutation rates than that of the PolE mutator strain.Technical Experience:o Fluctuation assays for measuring mutation rateso Tetrad dissection

Independent research creating a 3D in-vitro model of human bone marrow to study stromal and blood cell interactions