Date/Time/Location:

Wednesday, March 19
12 pm – 1 pm
SLU Orin Smith Auditorium and Zoom Webinar

Biography:

Dr. Jennifer Davis, PhD is the Eva and Arra Woods endowed associate professor of Cardiovascular Biology with primary appointments in the Departments of Lab Medicine and Pathology as well as Bioengineering at the University of Washington. She directs the Center for Cardiovascular Biology and serves as the interim director for the Institute of Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine. Dr. Davis has been involved in the fields of skeletal and cardiac muscle physiology since 1998, and in 2008 she extended her expertise into fibroblast biology which laid the groundwork for her current research program, which seeks to identify the basic physiologic tenets of fibroblast biology and how their homeostatic behaviors turn maladaptive. To this end her lab investigates the mechanistic underpinnings of cardiac fibrosis, tissue stiffening, and structural remodeling. In 2014 she was awarded the Louis N. & Arnold M. Katz Basic Cardiovascular Science Research prize from the American Heart Association and in 2023 she received the Janice Pfeffer Distinguished Lectureship from the International Society for Heart Research for her work in muscle and fibroblast physiology. Her research program has been continually supported by the National Institute of Health and American Heart Association. It has also led to more than 50 publications in top tier journals including Cell, Cell Stem Cell, and Circulation.

Dr. Davis received her doctorate in molecular and integrative physiology from the University of Michigan under the mentorship of Dr. Joseph Metzger in 2007. Following that she performed her post-doctoral training in the Heart Institute at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center under the mentorship of Dr. Jeff Molkentin. In 2013, she was awarded a K99/R00 from NHLBI and transitioned to research faculty. Her independent laboratory at the University of Washington opened in 2015.