Area of Study: Pediatric Neuromuscular Diseases & Rehabilitation.

My area of concentration was psychosocial aspects of childhood physical disability with Professor Al Hastorf as my advisor. He and Professor Sandy Dornbusch were my advisors for my Human Biology Honors Thesis. This experience stimulated my interest in research and academic medicine.

I ultimately specialized in pediatric physical medicine & rehabilitation and more recently in my career, I have focused on pediatric neuromuscular medicine. I have developed novel outcome measures for clinical trials and have led multicenter international clinical trials using precision genetic-based therapeutics for Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD).

It was incredibly rewarding to be a leader in clinical development for DMD therapeutics, and I had the privilege to participate as an expert physician-scientist in both the FDA advisory committees and European Medicines Agency CHMP oral explanations for drug approvals which both ultimately resulted in the first approved therapies to treat the underlying cause of Duchenne muscular dystrophy (genetic abnormalities leading to dystrophin deficiency).

My interest in the comprehensive multidisciplinary medical and rehabilitation management of congenital childhood disabilities and specifically research where I ultimately focused on muscular dystrophy therapeutic development really started with my formative experiences as an undergraduate in Human Biology and my early research experiences at Stanford University.