Katerina Kucera

Hi everyone;

My name is Katerina Kucera and I am originally from the land of “milk, honey and Gregor Mendel”, the Czech Republic. Before getting serious and going to college, I spent several fantastic seasons as a tourist guide and a children’s camp instructor in Croatia and later took the opportunity to be an au pair in the U.S. and learn the “non-English” English while lounging around the Sunshine State beaches. I received my BS in chemistry from the Florida Community College in Jacksonville and the University of North Florida.

Working as a lab tech at the Mayo Clinic during my junior and senior years, was a great introduction to science for me. I was able to participate in the development and use of transgenic mouse models for neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, Progressive Supranuclear Palsy and Frontotemporal Dementia and Parkinsonism.

I am a member of the Willard lab, which among other great things, is the lab with the best view of Duke Chapel. I study X inactivation and am trying to understand why some genes are subject and others escape inactivation.

For more information visit http://labs.genome.duke.edu/WillardLab/.

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