Congratulations to Roma Kaul for defending her dissertation on April 16, 2019
On April 16, 2019, Cell Systems and Anatomy graduate student Roma Kaul (pictured above) presented her dissertation defense titled: ‘Interphase Effects of Microtubule Targeting Agents‘ to a lecture hall audience, whose members included her defense committee. She then went through a review of her dissertation and a question and answer process with the defense committee, before she was notified that she had successfully defended her dissertation and would be receiving her Ph.D.! Roma is a PhD student and located in Dr. Susan Mooberry’s lab. Dr. Mooberry’s research interest is dedicated to the discovery of more effective therapies for the treatment of cancer, primarily breast cancer. There are several aspects to our work including drug discovery, identification of the mechanisms of drug action, the nature of drug resistance, identifying rational drug combinations and elucidation of the signaling pathways by which microtubule targeting agents elicit their effects.
Roma Kaul was born on September 18, 1991 in New Delhi, India to Dr. Rakesh Koul and Mrs. Renu Koul. Roma spent most of her childhood in New Delhi until her family moved to Bangalore, India in 2003. After graduating high school, she decided to pursue a degree in engineering with a major in biotechnology. Alongside her undergraduate training, Roma dedicated her time in a breast cancer research laboratory at the St. John’s Research Institute in Bangalore. In 2013, Roma graduated with a degree in engineering from P.E.S Institute of Technology, Bangalore, India. In the same year, she won an Avon-AACR international scholar-in-training travel award to present her research at the 2013 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS), in San Antonio, TX, USA. She was admitted to the Integrated Biomedical Sciences (IBMS) PhD program in August 2014 and advanced to candidacy in May 2016. During her time at UT Health San Antonio, Roma was awarded the presidential ambassador scholarship award in 2017, she won the outstanding poster prize at two consecutive Pharmacology graduate student symposiums held in 2015 and 2016, and also received a fellowship to attend the prestigious Aspen Cancer conference in 2018.
Future:
Roma will be headed to Harvard Medical School for her postdoctoral training with Dr. Joan S Brugge. Dr. Brugge is the director of the Ludwig Cancer Center at Harvard and has previously served as the chair for the department of cell biology at Harvard Medical School.