Elizabeth-Lauren Stevenson Awarded NIH Predoctoral Fellowship

Elizabeth-Lauren (Lizzy) Stevenson was awarded a competitive Ruth L. Kirschstein Predoctoral Individual National Research Service Award (F31) from the National Institutes of Health National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. The Kirschstein F31 Awards support the graduate research of students with a demonstrated potential to develop as productive and independent researchers.

Lizzy is a 4th year MCB student in the Dunlap/Loros Lab in the Department of Molecular and Systems Biology at Dartmouth's Geisel School of Medicine. She studies the molecular mechanisms behind circadian clocks and her funded research focuses on how phosphorylation of key proteins may regulate several clock features. These clock features include temperature compensation, in which the speed of an organism's internal clock is maintained across a physiological temperature range, and determination of period length, the time it takes for the clock to complete one cycle. To tackle these questions, Lizzy is using biochemical and genetic approaches in two systems: mammalian tissue culture and the model organism Neurospora crassa, a fungus. Learning how the clock works on a molecular level can help us better understand what causes circadian based sleep disorders and therefore bring us closer to the development of treatments.

Originally from northwestern Washington, Lizzy did her undergraduate work at William Jewell College in Liberty, MO where she majored in Molecular Biology in the Oxbridge Honors Program. She loves spending time outside running, hiking (see above!), and skiing (making her right at home in the Upper Valley). When not in the lab or running about outside, she can be found snuggling with her two cats and knitting.