I received my B.S degree from North Carolina State University in Biochemistry in 1986. Soon after graduation, I accepted a technician position at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center where i worked with Dr. Bob Schulz on mapping the location of several new overlapping genes in Drosophila. After that, I accepted a position at The University of Texas Southwestern Medical School as a technician with Dr. Steve Wasserman where I mapped the location of two putative serine proteases in Drosophila. I quickly determined that Developmental Biology was not my forte', so I accepted a technician position with Dr. Steve Sprang (HHMI) at UT Southwestern where I crystallized and solved the X-ray structure of two new bovine annexins. I entered graduate school under Dr. Sprang, and I completed the X-ray structure of two C2 domains; one from synaptotagmin and one from Protein kinase C. After my PhD was completed, I accepted a post-doctoral position at Yale University under Dr. Axel Brunger. While was at Yale (and later Stanford), I solved the crystal structures of full-length synaptotagmin III and the SNARE complex. I was awarded a Burroughs-Wellcome research fellowship for this work, and I took an Assistant Professor position at UT Medical Branch in the Department of Physiology. After Hurricane Ike, I moved to Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center where I accepted an Associate Professor position in the Department of Cell Physiology and Molecular Biophysics.
Interests
- Biochemistry
- Muscular function
- Musculoskeletal