Education:

• B.S., Zoology and Physiology, University of Wyoming, 2002 (Advisor: Steven Buskirk)
  
• Ph.D., Biology (with Physiology emphasis), University of California at Riverside, 2007 (Major Advisor: Kimberly Hammond)

Research Summary:

When you or I go to the mountains or any high elevation locale, our bodies undergo a myriad of physiological changes. We produce more red blood cells to help carry oxygen, our breathing patterns change, and we can get exhausted more easily. If we are at high altitude for a long enough period of time, our bodies may display other changes, such as a larger heart and lungs, and changed enzyme capacities in our muscles to assist with work; these changes, which are often reversible, are usually referred to as acclimation. Acclimation--especially acclimation to high altitude--is often thought to be beneficial, especially for athletes training for endurance events (i.e. a larger heart and lungs is typically beneficial for an endurance athlete).

Most studies that have explored acclimation to high altitude have viewed acclimation as a reversible process and as a result they have only used adult animals in their studies, with no regard for the organism's developmental background. Although relatively ignored by physiologists, disturbances of the developmental process, whether genetic or environmental, can result in significant variability within a species. This variability can appear early or late in life, and it can be permanent. Low ambient oxygen concentrations (which are encountered at high altitude) have been identified as a significant physiological challenge, and have been shown to cause substantial instability to the developing organism when encountered during development and post-natal growth.

For my Ph.D. dissertation, I am investigating what effects in utero development have on mammalian energetics and metabolism. My low-altitude site is the University of California, Riverside campus (at an elevation of about 340 m) and my high altitude site is the Barcroft Facility at the University of California's White Mountain Research Station (elevation of about 3800 m) in eastern California. Our lab uses the North American deer mouse, Peromyscus maniculatus as a study species because they occur naturally over a wide altitudinal range, from below sea level in Death Valley, to almost the summit of Mt. Whitney in the nearby Sierra Nevada mountains.

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