Elected to serve the 43rd District in the Great State of North Dakota in the House of Representatives.

Krampade is a family owned company focused on producing a line of sports drinks focused on mitigating cramps in athletes and others suffering from chronic and acute cramping. After three years of product development, we have moved forward in launching this company and are presently looking for investors. We fill an important, unfilled niche in the sports drink market that is currently unmet.

I direct the science operations and am responsible for making science decisions, including research and development directions. I negotiate all science partnerships with our private, public, and academic sector partners both in the U.S. and abroad. In addition, I have a major role in business decisions and raising of capital. Agragen is focused on two separate sectors using our plant science platform. These sectors are biofuels and bioactive lipids. We have a highly exclusionary patent portfolio that gives us an excellent position in these two spaces using our platform plant, Camelina sativa. We have engineered extensive changes in target proteins to impart class-2 herbicide tolerance and have multiple programs on-going to enhance yield and oil quantity. Our other program uses are patented processes to produce bioactive lipids such as a sustainable source of "fish oil" from Camelina as well as other bioactive oils. In addition, we have extensive technology to produce biological proteins with a high-yield and on a time scale similar to expression in yeast. Our lead compound, AGR-131, is a cytokine trap in a market space with $26B in current sales. Our strategy is to reduce the downstream costs for these biological-based therapies via our novel production method and produce a sustainable source of bioactive lipids, focused currently on producing EPA and DHA..

I teach GI pharmacology to medical students and participate in small group education. For Graduate students, I direct our class in methods (PPT505) and neurochemistry (PPT530), while I am the sole instructor in scientific ethics (BIMD516). I serve on numerous committees including the Standing Committee on Faculty Rights, University Senate, Intellectual Property (chair), Science Misconduct and Conflict of Interest, Student Wellness Advisory Committee, and Intercollegiate Athletics as well as serving as Editor-in-Chief of Lipids and as a handling editor for Journal of Neurochemistry.For research, we focus on the role that alpha-synuclein has in brain lipid metabolism and its downstream impact on brain function, including neuroinflammation. In addition, we focus on the role that n-3 (omega-3) fatty acids have in human health and work in a translational mode in this area. Overall interests focus on brain and heart fatty acid and phospholipid metabolism and how these process are altered in disease.

I represented the faculty in the North Dakota University System on the State Board of Higher Education in a non-voting capacity. In addition, I advised the board on issues that impact faculty as well as serving on the Academic and Student Affairs committee.

My position was focused on studying brain lipid metabolism with an emphasis in Alzheimer's disease.

My focus was on the role that fatty acid binding proteins have in cellular fatty acid uptake, trafficking, and metabolism. This including not only lipid biochemistry, but a tremendous amount of protein purification as well. All facets of manuscript preparation was also a critical part of this position.

This was a small start-up pharmaceutical company focused on traumatic injury in brain. While at Cypros I directed the pharmacology group, designed experiments, helped to raise money, worked with outside collaborators, and worked in formulation chemistry. During this year, I had a key role in getting two drugs into the clinic by being responsible for drafting of Section 8 of two separate IND applications to the FDA as well as working on sections 3 and 6.