Kriza (she/her) is an MD-PhD student interested in membrane trafficking and, more broadly, exploring disease pathogenesis at the cellular level.
She is originally from Potomac, Maryland and graduated from the University of Chicago with a BS in Biological Sciences. She spent three years in the Horne-Badovinac lab and wrote her senior thesis on basement membrane protein secretion in Drosophila egg chambers. Before coming to Yale, she was an IRTA fellow in the Microbial Pathogenesis Section under Dr. Stephen Leppla at the NIH. There, she developed cytotoxic fusion proteins derived from anthrax toxin. Kriza is a Cell Biology graduate student in the de Camilli lab, where she will study lipid transfer proteins and membrane contact sites in the context of neurological disorders such as Parkinson's disease and chorea acanthocytosis.
Outside of academics, Kriza enjoys playing softball with the YSM intramural team, perfecting her coffee ice cream recipe, and spending time with her dog and two cats.