Shannon White,

My long-term research interests involve developing a comprehensive understand of how targetable signaling pathways crosstalk with transcriptional processes to contribute to the aberrant growth of cancer cells. This stems from a deep-rooted interest of mine in understanding how biological systems work. It is because of this curiosity that I pursued an undergraduate degree in bioengineering from the University of Maryland. Although my primary passion was embedded in biology, I chose bioengineering as my focus to challenge my thinking capabilities and to provide myself with fundamental knowledge across a range of scientific fields that I knew could be incorporated into my future scientific endeavors. I also sought out a biological research position to gain experience where I felt my degree was lacking and began a summer internship at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the Lab of Ron Brown which I continued throughout the following academic year. This experience provided me with in-depth knowledge of fundamental lab techniques as well as FDA drug approval processes. After graduating, I further explored the pharmaceutical industry as a manufacturing associate at GlaxoSmithKline. After quickly realizing I enjoyed the innovative and exploratory atmosphere of a research lab, I began studying the mechanisms underlying NF2 mutant-driven cancers in the lab of Dr. Chunling Yi, an expert in cancer signal transduction and Merlin-YAP signaling, at Georgetown University as a research assistant. It was then I began my training in cancer biology and investigation of how Merlin downstream effectors drive tumorigenesis. This opportunity resulted in two co-authorship publications, one on NF2 disease, prior to beginning my graduate training in the Tumor Biology program at Georgetown University. The crux of my graduate work centered on examining the mechanistic crosstalk between merlin-YAP signaling pathway and tumor metabolic pathways, which resulted in my first, first-author publication in 2019. I presented my initial findings on this project at the 2017 NF conference where I was selected as a platform presenter and at the Keystone Symposium on Tumor Metabolism during the poster session. After publishing this work, I transitioned into studying cancer epigenetics in the context of YAP-dependent tumors and was able to attend the Cancer Epigenetics Keystone Symposia using the support of my National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. Throughout my graduate work I have experienced immense conceptual and technical training in cancer signal transduction, tumor metabolism, and cancer epigenetics, all which are intertwined when considering cancer therapy. In my future research I plan to continue focusing on transcriptional regulation in cancer, while utilizing my background knowledge in signal transduction and cancer metabolism to influence my data interpretations and conclusions.