I have been an active faculty member of the Biology Department at Loyola University Chicago since the Fall of 2008.  I feel honored to teach at my alma mater (class of 1996 with a B.S. in Biology and a B.A. in Political Science). My career in research began here, which is why I have a very strong connection to our University and the Jesuit ideals of education.  Upon graduating from Loyola, I worked in the Diagnostics Division of Abbott Laboratories in Abbott Park, Illinois, analyzing clinical chemistries and optimizing new diagnostic technologies.  It was during that year that I discovered my love for basic research and that I wanted to devise and conduct my own experiments.  I attended graduate school and obtained my Ph.D. in Cell and Developmental Biology at the University of Illinois at Chicago where my research focused on human molecular genetics. My dissertation thesis (2005) reported the first map of the "distal tip" of the short arm of human chromosome 21 (21p) which is comprised of the telomere proper and subtelomeric sequences.  This project provided the framework for the Human Genome Project to eventually fill in missing genomic regions such as this one (about 15% of the genome was not sequenced initially due to its high repeat content).  At the end of graduate school, I focused on understanding the genetic aspect of human aging and telomeres.  I was awarded the U.S. Fulbright Award to conduct this type of research at the National Hellenic Research Foundation in Athens, Greece.  I continued my research training with a post-doctoral fellowship at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, where I studied the molecular components of human aging and epigenetics (2005-2008).  My family and I knew that we wanted to make Chicago our permanent home, so I decided to focus on teaching research, genetics, and epigenetics at Loyola University Chicago, making a full circle back to where I started, and it has been a privilege to do so.  Although a native of the north side of Chicago, I now reside in the western suburbs of Chicago with my supportive husband and three wonderful children.