I am the Senior Licensing Officer for the MUSC Foundation for Research Development. In this role, I evaluate MUSC inventions for commercial potential, manage protection of intellectual property (IP), market technologies to prospective licensees, negotiate IP agreements, and assist faculty in commercializing inventions.

I contribute to the development of novel scientific ideas into viable commercial products at the Technology Development Center (TDC).

• Evaluate life science and biomedical inventions for commercial opportunities• Identify competitive advantages, features and benefits of submitted inventions• Identify and build relationships with potential licensees • Meet with faculty inventors to determine potential trajectories for technologies• Prepare non-confidential invention descriptions for both a technical and non-technical audience• Meet with patent agents/lawyers to determine IP protection strategy for submitted technologies

• Performing unbiased and site-directed genetic manipulations to determine amino acids on the BK channel critical that interact with ethanol, assessed with behavioral and physiological methods• Participating in a drug screen with the goal to identify peptides that alter behavioral intoxication and tolerance to alcohol, currently have identified ~5 candidate peptides• Mastered a vast array of tools in molecular biology, genetics, microscopy and physiology.• Present research at least 2 times a year, ranging from conferences with 30,000+ attendees, to the neuroscience department with 50+ scientists • Manage and train undergraduate research volunteersDissertation Research- Elucidating the molecular basis for ethanol activation of the BK channel using genetic screens.I am investigating the molecular mechanisms underlying the behavioral effects of ethanol using the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans. My current research focuses on the molecular basis for the actions of ethanol on the big-conductance potassium (BK) channel using molecular, genetic, behavioral and electrophysiological approaches. Specifically, I am mutating residues on the BK channel to alter or prevent a molecular interaction with ethanol, and then test how intoxication and basal behavior are altered in C. elegans. This will provide insight into how ethanol modulates BK channel activity, and how this modulation contributes to behavioral intoxication.

• Collaborate with graduate students from MBA, law, pharmacy and engineering • Provide primary and secondary market research, competitive analysis and pricing models for a local early and growth stage start-up company

• Assisted postdoc and graduate research assistants with behavioral and physiology experiments• Executed fear-conditioning and immunohistochemistry experiments to develop a novel, sensitive behavioral test for senescence in ratsUndergraduate Research Project:Evaluated the effects of aging on extinction of trace fear conditioning. These studies involved training adult, middle-aged, and aged rats on a trace fear conditioning paradigm and subjecting them to multiple days of extinction training. By recording freezing as the dependent measure of learned fear, we demonstrated older animals exhibit impaired extinction of trace fear. In addition, we elucidated underlying morphological and biophysical changes within the medial prefrontal cortex that may contribute to these aging-related extinction impairments.