Assistant Professor of Hematology & Medical Oncology at the Emory University School of Medicine & Director, Cancer Animal Models Shared Resource of the Winship Cancer Institute
Dr. Gilbert-Ross earned her BS in Genetics from The University of Georgia in Athens in 1997, and her PhD in Genetics from Stony Brook University in New York in 2004. She then went on to complete a productive postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Cell Biology at Emory University. Dr. Gilbert-Ross' postdoctoral work centered on genetic analysis of cell proliferation, cell polarity, and tissue growth in Drosophila, a system that has made important contributions to cancer research and remains quite relevant to current biomedical research problems in vertebrate cancer. Afterwards, Dr. Gilbert-Ross joined the Department of Hematology and Medical Oncology at the Winship Cancer Institute to work on mammalian models of tumorigenesis. During this time, Dr. Gilbert-Ross applied her knowledge of in vivo genetics and cancer signaling pathways to develop and characterize a novel lentiviral-Cre genetically engineered mouse model of lung adenocarcinoma. Currently, Dr. Gilbert-Ross runs an NCI-funded laboratory in the Winship Cancer Institute using in vivo approaches to cancer biology and pre-clinical therapeutics.
Chang-Soo Seong, PhD - Assistant Scientist
My first project involves studying the mechanism and signaling pathway(s) required for LKB1 mutant cells to cross the basement membrane in vivo, while the second is to generate Drosophila mop mutants in order to characterize HD-PTP’s role in invasion in vivo.
Briana Rackley - Cancer Biology Graduate Student
I am a 5th year student in the Cancer Biology graduate program. My research involves using Drosophila melanogaster to study the role of the tumor suppressor LKB1, and how it acts cooperatively with oncogenic drivers such as KRAS to promote lung adenocarcinoma progression and metastasis. When not working in the lab, I mainly enjoy spending time with my son and husband, as well as shopping online and watching reality television.
Evan J. Kiely - Research Specialist
I graduated from Emory in 2017 with a B.S. in Neuroscience & Behavioral Biology and Anthropology & Human Biology. During my time in the Gilbert-Ross lab I have: mapped a gene, utilized microfluidics to facilitate imaging of in vivo cellular dynamics and patterns of metastasis in 3rd(+) instar Drosophila melanogaster larvae, worked with Emory's Imaging Core to adapt existing imaging techniques to better address our unique needs, spearheaded a proposal and visit to Janelia to use the Simultaneous Multiview Light-Sheet Microscope, and proposed, designed, built, and maintained this website. Currently, my focus is on: producing publication quality data from the extremely large 5D image sets generated at Janelia, and refining the techniques I helped to develop previously, in order to coax similar quality results from the instrumentation available to us on a regular basis (a Leica SP8, a Nikon Crest, and a two channel openSPIM set up). Additionally, I have been spending time creating custom macros/plugins for FIJI, learning the ins and outs of Imaris, and doing my very best to gain proficiency with Python, which I recently used to implement an IOT monitoring solution for some of our equipment.