At a glance

Education

University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

• Ph.D, Pharmacology

The College of St. Scholastica

• Bachelor of Science, Biochemistry

Research History

• Senior Scientist, Illumina

• Scientist, University of Wisconsin, Madison

• Graduate Researcher, University of Minnesota

• Research Associate, BioTechne

I currently live in Wisconsin with my wife, Taylor

We sold our first home in St. Paul to move to Madison, Wisconsin. We are currently deep in remodeling updates to our new house. We have three (yes, I know, it's a lot, but my wife loves them) corgis: Courtney, Timmy, and Teddy. We eventually want to move back to Minnesota, but our life is pretty cool here.

I earned a PhD in Pharmacology from the University of Minnesota

I grew up on a dairy farm in rural Minnesota and earned a degree in biochemistry from the College of St. Scholastica in Duluth, MN in 2012. After working for a couple biotech companies (Medtox Laboratories: clinical drug screening; R&D Systems: protein purification) in the Twin cities, I joined the University of Minnesota, Department of Pharmacology Doctoral Program where I studied protein kinases with an emphasis on structural biology. I completed my dissertation in 2021 under guidance of my thesis advisor, Dr. Nicholas Levinson. When I first moved to Madison, I worked as a scientist at the University of Wisconsin where I use Cryo Electron Microscopy to study bioengineered shark antibodies. Now, I've switched to developing enzyme processes for use in genomic sequencing platforms at Illumina.

I am passionate about mentoring the next generation of scientists.

The reason that I pursued a doctorate is because I love working with students, either in a classroom or in the laboratory. Not only do they inspire me by their enthusiasm, but they also challenge me to expand my own knowledge. My ultimate goal is to teach biochemistry at a smaller liberal arts college.

My Personal Statement

Originating from a rural, farming background, I was admittedly naïve to the possibilities of research when I selected an undergraduate institute. At that time, I planned to study biochemistry and had my sights tentatively set on medical school. My goal was to improve people’s lives through more informed therapeutic options, basing on my observations of what seemed to be trial-and-error medication selection by my father’s doctors for his bipolar disorder. However, as I learned more about the numerous proteins that coordinate cellular processes, I began to fully appreciate the complexity of regulating the body through chemical therapy, and I better understood the challenge of medication selection for doctors. During my junior to senior year of college (2011), my father’s mental health deteriorated severely and forced my parents to separate. This turn of events ultimately revealed that I was not built for a medical career, and I discovered research as an alternative pathway to my goal.

As a graduate student, I have contributed insight into how the structure of protein kinases, a key class of signaling enzymes implicated in many cancers, is influenced by drug binding and how the kinase activation state alters drug binding. The results of my studies directly apply to the selectivity of inhibitors currently in clinical development and suggest potential uses for these inhibitors in treatment of human cancers involving the Aurora kinases. Importantly, the methodology that I have helped to develop can be applied to other clinically-relevant kinases and has broad implications for the rational design of improved kinase inhibitors that exploit structural dynamics to gain selectivity. Better understanding the structural motion of protein kinases has the potential to vastly improve targeted therapies and expand our ability to provide personalized medicine to patients.