My laboratory was established in the Department of Biological Sciences at the Florida Institute of Technology in August 2014.  We are interested in the basic biological questions of how organisms sense their environment and respond to stress.  Our focus is on the heat shock response (HSR) due to its important roles in normal growth and its involvement in human diseases including neurodegenerative diseases and cancer.  We are identifying mechanisms of action for novel regulators of the HSR, exploring the basis for HSR tissue-specificity, and extending our findings from C. elegans using cultured human cell lines.  We currently have openings for undergraduate, masters, and doctoral students.