Through extracellular vesicles our cells have developed a remarkable ability to coordinate and communicate with one another in support of our higher-order existence. The intricacies of intercellular communication and cellular cross-talk drive my curiosity. I want to understand how cells modulate their microenvironment— in homeostasis and environmental adaptation—and in disease states such as the metastatic spread of cancer. Extracellular vesicles (EVs) may also offer an unparalleled opportunity for the detection of cancer in its earliest and most treatable stages. Cancer cells release hundreds to thousands of EV each day — some of them into blood, allowing for less-invasive liquid biopsy approaches that are still richly informative of cancer biology and disease states. The devastating impact a late stage cancer diagnosis presents to an individual is where my curiosity and passion intersect; I envision a future where no cancer diagnosis arrives too late for there to be realistic hope. Ultimately my goals are to engineer and utilize EVs for advanced therapies and disease diagnosis/monitoring.