DEI Statement
Throughout my career I have strived to promote diversity, equity and inclusion. While these ideas have just begun to be discussed broadly, I have always sought to provide support to people who want to develop as scientists. I have served as the Neuroscience Graduate Program (NGP) Faculty Ally for Diversity. I currently serve on the NGP Diversity committee and am a member of the NGP Climate task force. I also served on the Academic Affairs Diversity Planning Group (AADPG) for the LSI, and served on the LSI DEI Strategic Planning Team. In addition to these broad efforts, I have also worked to increase the diversity of conferences that I have organized. As the chair of the 2018 Lysosomes and Endocytosis Gordon Conference, I succeeded in greatly increasing gender equity and made inroads in increasing the number of speakers from diverse backgrounds. In my own laboratory, I have sought out opportunities to mentor postdoctoral fellows, graduate, undergraduate and high school students from diverse backgrounds. Moving forward, I am continuing to work at the local and national level to increase diversity.
Research Interests
The Weisman lab uses cultured neurons, cell lines and yeast to study neurodegeneration and cancer, with the goal of determining the mechanisms of myosin V based transport and phosphoinositide signaling. The ultimate goal is to develop novel therapies for relevant diseases. Our group uses aspects of biochemistry, molecular biology, cell biology, genetics and developmental biology to discover how cells function.