I am a Professor of Bioengineering with secondary faculty appointments in the Department of Pathology and the Clinical and Translational Science Institute of the University of Pittsburgh. I received my PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas, and post-doctoral training in Cell Biology at Harvard Medical School and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. I am an Associate Editor of Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering, and an editorial board member of Journal of Biological Chemistry, Cytoskeleton, and Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology. I am an avid lover of Rock music, a die-hard fan of Pink Floyd, and I enjoy playing guitar and composing music – link to my Spotify album.
Our main research interests are to: a) gain novel insights on how dysregulation of fundamental drivers of cell migration contributes to metastatic progression of solid cancers and pathological angiogenesis; and b) develop translational strategies exploiting the pathways of dysregulation as means to suppress metastatic phenotype of cancer cells and angiogenesis-dependent pathology. We use a variety of experimental approaches including RNAi/CRISPR, co-culture assays, genetically engineered mouse models of cancer, tumor xenografts, in vitro and in vivo angiogenesis assays, functional genomics and proteomics, live-cell imaging, protein-protein interaction assays, multiplexed quantitative immunohistochemistry, flow cytometry, and small molecule docking and screening.