I am an MD/PhD student at the University of Iowa working in the Iowa Institute for Vision Research. Our group is focused on genetic causes of blindness, and I am specifically very interested in mitochondrial genetic disease and how genetic variants impact development of complex tissues like the retina. I use induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) to generate retinal cells in vitro from patient cells, which allows me to observe the effects of specific mutations on retinal tissue development. Currently, I am using single cell genomic approaches to understand how different retinal cell types respond differently to mitochondrial mutations. Broadly, I am interested in leveraging an understanding of developmental biology to create treatments for genetic disease.