Candice E. Paulsen, PhD

I love exploring the unknown and the thrill and sense of accomplishment that comes with making the unknown familiar. This passion has inspired me to make significant transitions, both conceptually and with methodology, at every stage of my career.  I purposefully choose research projects that serve to improve human health as well as stand to make fundamental discoveries of basic biology and physiology. Moreover, I thoroughly enjoy teaching and mentoring as well as helping kids find the joy in science. As a graduate student with Kate Carroll at the University of Michigan and The Scripps Research Institute in Jupiter, FL, I studied redox regulation of signal transduction cascades important to cancer. As a postdoctoral fellow with David Julius at the University of California, San Francisco, I determined the structure of an important pain receptor, TRPA1 by cryo-EM. In my independent lab, we will take a multidisciplinary approach to understand how TRPA1 is regulated under basal and chronic pain/inflammation conditions and we will take a broader look at molecular changes involved in the transition from acute to chronic pain.