Dawn Clifford Hart

Dawn Clifford Hart, Ph.D., 2004
Postdoctoral Fellow
Vanderbilt University Medical School
Nashville, Tennessee

Dawn Clifford Hart, Ph.D., 2004

The Graduate Program in Cancer Biology at Wayne State University is an invaluable training experience. With more than 50 faculty members participating in the program, you have the freedom to explore research training across many disciplines of cancer biology, from basic science research in model systems to clinical trial studies. Unique to this program is a clinical rotation at the Karmanos Cancer Institute where you spend time shadowing an oncologist and receive a first hand view of laboratory research being put to work. Regardless of what dissertation topic you choose to pursue, the experience of meeting cancer patients and their families will motivate you in the lab and for the duration of your career. After completing a series of traditional biology courses, the program offers a variety of seminars and advanced cancer biology courses that all Cancer Biology students participate in throughout their graduate training. With the curriculum designed this way, the Cancer Biology student remains current on new developments in cancer research beyond their specialty area. For this reason, Cancer Biology Ph.D. graduates have a strong background in several areas of cancer biology and can easily transition to a different area of cancer research as their career advances. While my dissertation research in Dr. George Brush’s lab concentrated on understanding the regulation of proteins involved in DNA metabolism during meiotic progression, my postdoctoral training in Dr. Kathy Gould’s lab at Vanderbilt University Medical Center utilizes fission yeast as a model system to understand the regulation of mitosis and cytokinesis. Fission yeast cells, like human cells, form a ring structure composed of several proteins that assemble at the future site of cell division. Placement of the ring during mitosis spatially dictates where the cell will divide during cytokinesis. Therefore, a centrally located ring is critical for equal distribution of chromosomes to newly generated cells and certainly contributes to preserving the genomic stability of a cell. To support this research, I was awarded an NRSA individual postdoctoral fellowship. I’m certain that my training at Wayne State University in the Cancer Biology program prepared me to attain a position in a prestigious laboratory and receive competitive funding.

Photograph taken in front of the original entrance to Vanderbilt University Medical School