Professional Certifications and Education
- Doctor of Pharmacology — UAMS, Little Rock, Arkansas
- Business Certificate in Entrepreneurship (2021-2023) from Sam Walton College of Business at University of Arkansas in Fayetteville
- Bachelor of Science — Louisiana Tech University, Ruston, Louisiana
Research Experience
I serve as a NIDA T32 Postdoctoral Fellow in the Pharmacology Department at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, under the supervision of Dr. Lisa Brents. I earned my PhD by developing a patented activity assay for a mitochondrial protease and am currently advancing a safer version of buprenorphine for maternal-fetal dyads. I have 9 years of experience in biomedical research, experimental design, preclinical data interpretation, and scientific writing, which includes 10 peer-reviewed published papers (5 as first author) and numerous scientific communication projects. My work has been featured at institutions like the Society of Toxicology and various branches of the NIH
Research Interests
My research interests include the area of drugs of abuse and drug metabolism, specifically characterizing the role of buprenorphine in the context of neonatal opioid withdrawal syndrome in preclinical models. I am a former TL1 Health Sciences Innovation and Entrepreneurship fellow, and my research interests also focus on commercially viable projects.