female scientists

Blake Hauser

Senior Blake Hauser is double-majoring in environmental health sciences and biology, with a minor in chemistry. In January, she received the Churchill Scholarship, a research-focused award that provides funding to American students for a year of master’s study in science, mathematics, and engineering at the University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on the continuum of care for mothers diagnosed with HIV during pregnancy and the implementation of antiretroviral drugs that can help suppress the virus.

Anna Cliffe

Anna Cliffe is a postdoctoral research fellow in the UNC Neuroscience Center in the School of Medicine. Her research focuses on the herpes simplex virus (HSV) and the effect stress has on reactivation of the virus.

Kaitlyn Tsai

Senior Kaitlyn Tsai is an undergraduate researcher in the College of Arts & Sciences majoring in chemistry with a biochemistry focus and minoring in medical anthropology and biology. Her research involves conducting complex chemical reactions to better understand the chemistry behind biological processes such as cancer. After graduation this May, she will pursue a PhD at the University of California, San Francisco.

Yesenia Merino

Yesenia Merino is the outreach coordinator within the Office for Undergraduate Research and a PhD student studying health behavior in the Gillings School of Global Public Health. Her research focuses on social justice issues in public health.

Sarah Schmitt

Sarah Schmitt is a PhD student in the Department of Geography atUNC-Chapel Hill. Her research examines the strong coupling between hydrology and ecology in tropical islands. She is funded by the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program, the Geological Society of America, and National Geographic’s Young Explorers Program.

Jenny Hughes

Senior Jenny Hughes is an undergraduate student majoring in environmental science with a minor in marine science. Her research focuses on the effects of hunger on the foraging behavior of mud crabs within the presence of predators that sit higher up in the food chain.

Sharonda LeBlanc

Sharonda LeBlanc is a Carolina Postdoctoral Program for Faculty Diversity Scholar, conducting her postdoctoral research with Professor Dorothy Erie in the Chemistry Department at UNC-Chapel Hill. Her current research projects focus on DNA mismatch repair — a system for recognizing and repairing errors that can arise during DNA replication and recombination.

Folami Ideraabdullah

Folami Ideraabdullah is an assistant professor in the Department of Genetics in the UNC School of Medicine and a researcher at the Nutrition Research Institute in Kannapolis. Her research looks at the genetic differences between individuals to determine how the cells in the body respond to changes in diet.

Kemi Doll

Kemi Doll is a clinical instructor in the UNC OB-GYN Division of Gynecologic Oncology and a Cancer Care Quality Training Program Post-Doctoral Fellow at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. In 2015, she received a Postdoctoral Award for Research Excellence.

Emily Jennings

Senior Emily Jennings is an undergraduate researcher in the Kieber Lab at UNC-Chapel Hill. A biology major, her research focuses on the communication, production, and function of plant hormones. Jennings specifically studies how hormones affect rice in aims to increase food production.