I am a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of John Dowling where I am interested in exploring the role(s) of retinoic acid and other retinoids in retinal development.

The studies I carried out for my doctoral degree where based on my interest on cell specification and patterning during early development. I investigated the rearrangements of the centrosomal components during oogenesis as a first step in understanding how developmental axes are established and maintained in the egg prior to fertilization. In addition I looked at the role of growth factors in patterning the mesenchyme during gastrulation. All my doctoral work was done using sea urchin embryos, an invertebrate deuterostome, as a model system.