Inas Aboobakar, MD, recently sent the following update: “I was fortunate to work in Joe Heitman’s lab from 2008-2011 while I was an undergraduate student at Duke University. This was my first time working in a lab and I could not have asked for a better mentored research experience with Joe and Lukasz Kozubowski, who is now on faculty at Clemson. Together we published two manuscripts and I also had the opportunity to present the findings of my project at the American Society of Microbiology annual meeting. I stayed at Duke for medical school and pursued ophthalmology research at the Duke Eye Center, which was supported in part through the Duke MGM department’s Student Research Fellowship. I subsequently completed ophthalmology residency at the Johns Hopkins Wilmer Eye Institute and a glaucoma fellowship at Harvard/Mass Eye and Ear. Currently I am completing a glaucoma research fellowship at Mass Eye and Ear and plan to apply for an NIH K08 Clinician-Scientist Development Award.
I am incredibly grateful to the Duke MGM Department and Joe for supporting the research endeavors of undergraduates and medical students, which instilled in me a passion for a clinician-scientist career path and provided an excellent foundation for every subsequent research opportunity I have pursued.”