Natalie R. Gassman, Ph.D.
Prinicpal Investigator
Natalie received a BA in chemistry from Michigan State University. She earned a PhD from the University of California Los Angeles in chemistry. She held post-doctorate positions at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the Wake Forest University School of Medicine. Her postdoctoral training focused on the role of DNA repair in response to environmental exposures and how modulated DNA repair machinery contributes to cancer development. As an associate professor of pharmacology and toxicology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham with joint appointments in Nutrition Sciences and at the O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center, her work focuses on characterizing the influence environmental exposures have on DNA repair and characterizing how DNA repair proteins are altered or modified in the context of cancer. She has also developed a versatile detection method that helps identify deficiencies in repair mechanisms that give cancer cells a survival edge and hopes that these results can be applied in a clinical setting to tailor therapies for cancer patients.
Kaveri Goel, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow
Kaveri received her B.S. and M.S. in Biochemistry in 2010 and 2013, respectively, from Aligarh Muslim University, India. She then attended School of Life Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India, where she earned her Ph.D. in Cancer and Epigenetics in January 2022. During her Ph.D. studies, she investigated the role of an ATP-dependent chromatin remodeler SMARCAD1 on DNA damage and cancer metastasis.
In July 2022, she joined Gassman lab as a postdoctoral fellow. Her current research project focuses on exploring the molecular mechanisms that are associated with the incidences and mortality in prostate cancer patients.
Arlet Hernandez
Graduate Student
Arlet is a 4th year graduate student part of the P3 theme in the Graduate Biomedical Sciences program. She earned her in BS in Biology and BA in Interdisciplinary studies from Florida International University. Her project focuses on understanding the mitochondrial and metabolic effects of an e-cigarette by-product, dihydroxyacetone in the lung, heart and liver.
Jenna Hedlich, MS
Research Technician
Jenna received a BS in Biomedical Science with a minor in Criminal Justice from Grand Valley State University. She earned her MS in Forensic Science from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. In October of 2022 she joined the Gassman lab as a research technician. She currently is working on quantifying mitochondrial DNA damage via qPCR in rat and human samples, as well as supporting ongoing toxicology projects in the lab.
