Paula Bernal Email and Phone Number

Manage the processing, maintenance and downstream use of samples derived from Human Vaccine Trials. Coordinate with the clinical team all study-related requirements for the appropriate collection of samples of immunological relevance. Provide organizational and technical support to all personnel in the maintenance of standard laboratory procedure for sample processing and usage of the Flow/Mass Cytometry Core equipment. Create and maintain all sample records for the Cell-Mediated Immunity Biorepository, as well as being in charge of all relevant Data Management Systems including: GlobalTrace, LDMS and SLIMS. Create clear communication lines between clinicians, nurses, lab personnel, Principal Investigators, study monitors, administrators and sponsors.Organizer, problem solver and all around Chaos Coordinator

Helped the Office of International Student and Family Service as an Spanish Language as an interpreter doing sequential interpreting for Parent/Teacher Conferences and simultaneous interpretation during Back to School Night and other school-wide events.

Responsible for the coordination of clinical study samples; including their scheduling, collection, processing, data base management and storage. On a daily basis contribute to the maintenance, running and scheduling of various instruments in the Flow Cytometry and Mass Cytometry Core; including data generation and processing. As a whole, responsible for ensuring design, development, documentation and implementation of research procedures and protocols using a variety of complex activities.

Working with the Center for Vaccine Development. My projects involve Phospho-flow as a tool in the detection of phosphorylated epitopes in T and B cell receptor signaling as markers of activation. Currently I am discriminating the signaling pathways specifically activated by different structural components of bacteria in various B cell subpopulations; hoping to improve antigen vaccine design.

My specific research project involved elucidating a novel role for zinc in mediating pulmonary endothelial contraction in response to hypoxia. This project allowed me to gained great experience in live cell imaging techniques including: epifluorescence, spinning-disk confocal and Total-internal reflection fluorescence (TIRF) as well as using fluorophores and fluorescently tagged proteins. In addition, I am highly experiences in immunofluorescence and confocal imaging, and have experience in SEM and TEM.

Teaching assistant for the Histology Lab of fist and second year medical students

This is a national state-of-the-art techniques course in fluorescence microscopy and imaging held annually in Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory. I contributed in sample preparation for laboratory portions of the course, in addition to troubleshooting and answering conceptual questions on the techniques used during the practices.

Assistant for the Ethics Committee for Clinical Research and Animal Experimentation

Young researcher for a perfluorocarbon liquid ventilation project in an ovine model of acute respiratory distress syndrome.

Engineering Materials, 2000 and Kinetics Applied to Reactor Design, 2002.