Student Profiles

Gretchen graduated summa cum laude from Macalester College in 2017 with a major in Neuroscience. She first participated in research as an undergraduate summer intern in the lab of Dr. Robert Thorne at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The Thorne lab studied the mechanisms and pathways involved with the delivery of biologics into the central nervous system (CNS) centered on antibody-based therapeutics targeting neurological disorders. Gretchen spent two summers studying Fc receptor distribution within the CNS and brain vasculature focusing on how these receptors impacted the delivery of IgG-based immunotherapies.

After graduating from Macalester, Gretchen received a Fulbright grant to conduct 12 months of research at the University of Bern in the lab of Dr. Britta Engelhardt, studying neuroinflammation and immune cell migration. Specifically, her project focused on immune cell migration into the central nervous system during experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis, an animal model of multiple sclerosis.

Gretchen then continued neuroscience research as an NIH postbaccalaureate fellow. She evaluated the effect of age on the ability of transplanted neural precursor cells to integrate and form bidirectional connections with the host brain. The CNS generally cannot regenerate damaged neurons following injury or disease, and the ability of transplanted neural stem cells to form an integrated neuronal tissue with bidirectional connectivity may have implications for CNS regenerative medicine.

In 2021, Gretchen entered the MSTP at Northwestern University. She completed two years of medical school before starting her PhD in the NIH OxCam Scholars program. As an Oxford scholar, Gretchen plans to further study neural stem cell transplantation with a focus on elucidating the mechanisms by which the adult rodent brain innervates transplant-derived neuronal tissue under the mentorship of Zoltan Molnar and Francis Szele at the University of Oxford and Alan Koretsky in the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke