Dr. Laura Barreyro I have many good memories of my time at Einstein. After doing lab rotations in the Biochemistry and Pathology departments, I rotated in Dr. Ulrich Steidl's lab in the Cell Biology department. Dr. Steidl had just opened his lab, and I joined his group as his first Ph.D. student to study leukemia stem cells for my research thesis. My main project was to identify novel therapeutic targets in acute myeloid leukemia stem cells using fluorescence-activated cell sorting followed by transcriptomic analysis. At that time, single-cell technologies were not available, and using gene expression microarrays in sorted stem and progenitor cells was very challenging due to their low cell numbers. Working on the project required pushing the available technology to its limits. I remember my many trips to the newly opened Price building to work with David Reynolds and his team at the Gene Expression core to make it happen. Laura Barreyro Graduate school can be difficult; yet several critical aspects make Einstein a special place to pursue graduate studies. First is Einstein's unique atmosphere. It is very collegial. The collaborative environment and the quality of the science are exceptional. The opportunities for students and postdocs to network across the institution were critical for me. For instance, I learned how to conjugate antibodies for flow cytometry from a postdoc in Dr. Arturo Casadeval's lab after he heard my struggles at the beer hour on a Friday evening. Another quality that makes Einstein different is its faculty. The professors are simultaneously fierce and humble, and they interact with students as future peers. The faculty in the Cell Biology Department generously committed their time to our scientific training, organizing regular journal clubs and "work in progress" seminars, which were essential to diversifying our knowledge outside our research topics. Because of our findings during my graduate research, I became interested in the role of innate immunity in leukemia development and maintenance. After graduation, I continued my training in Dr. Starczynowksi's group at Cincinnati Children's Hospital as a postdoctoral fellow, where I focused on understanding how cell-intrinsic, innate immune signaling influences leukemogenesis. In 2020, I joined the oncology translational research team at Janssen R&D, a Johnson and Johnson pharmaceutical company. I am currently working as a principal research scientist. In this role, I lead preclinical studies in the heme myeloid malignancies group, act as the translational research lead for an early-development Phase 1/2 myeloid program and collaborate with academic institutions to understand the mechanisms of disease progression and resistance to therapy in hematologic malignancies. Joining the Sue Golding Graduate Division at Einstein as an international graduate student and a mom of a three-year-old tremendously impacted my life. I felt welcomed from the beginning and met lifelong friends and mentors who helped me build the foundation of my professional life. Laura Barreyro, PhD I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to pursue graduate studies at Einstein. I am also fortunate to be able to keep working in the same field where I was trained for my Ph.D. and become part of the process that turns ideas from the laboratory into cures for the patients.
