I am a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Dermatology with a secondary faculty appointment in Immunology.  Before coming to Pittsburgh, I received my BS in Biology and Psychology from the University of Michigan, an MS in Life Sciences from Indiana State University and my PhD in Immunology and Microbiology from Indiana University School of Medicine.  As a graduate student, I began to build my expertise in organ specific immunity, which I built on as a post-doc in the Starzl Transplant Institute at the University of Pittsburgh.  I joined the Department of Dermatology as a post-doc in 2010.  In my post-doc and junior faculty research, I have studied the relationship between mast cells and neuropeptides in the context of allergy.  My primary research pursuits are to 1)investigate mechanisms of basic mast cell biology and 2) to apply these finding to clinically translatable strategies for systemic tolerance induction.