MD/PhD Student

I'm an MD-PhD student who entered the Tri-I Program in 2013. I am from Aiken, South Carolina, famous for it's steeplechases. My research interests are eclectic, from bioinformatic analysis of metagenomics in hospital environments to telomere dynamics in malaria and astronauts due to radiation. My thesis project is a collaboration between the Deitsch lab and Chris Mason’s lab from the Institute for Computational Biomedicine at Weill Cornell. The primary focus of my thesis project is on DNA repair and chromosome maintenance in the malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum. In my free time, you can find me in central park playing with my son or playing classic RPGs.

Publications:

Calhoun, S.F., Reed, J., Alexander, N., Mason, C.E., Deitsch, K.W. and Kirkman, L.A. (2017) Chromosome end repair and genome stability in Plasmodium falciparum. mBio, 8: e00547-17.

Niamh B O'Hara, Harry J Reed, Ebrahim Afshinnekoo, Donell Harvin, Nora Caplan, Gail Rosen, Brook Frye, Stephen Woloszynek, Rachid Ounit, Shawn Levy, Erin Butler, Christopher E Mason. (2017) Metagenomic characterization of ambulances across the USA. Microbiome, Sep 22;5(1):125.