MEET THE LAB



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Anne Carlson, Ph.D.

Principal Investigator

I received my Ph.D. from the University of Washington, and worked with Bertil Hille and Donner Babcock studying the preparation of sperm for fertilization. For my postdoctoral studies, I focused ion channel structure and function in the laboratory of William Zagotta.  I am now interested in the earliest signaling events of fertilization as well as the regulation of Cl- channels including the Ca2+-activated Cl- channel TMEM16a. Recently, I received the 2018 Paul F. Cranefield Award from the Society of General Physiologists.


Crystal Lara-Santos

Graduate Student

Crystal graduated from the University of Puerto Rico in 2019 with a B.S. in Industrial Microbiology. After graduation, Crystal spent two years performing research on characterizing fungi associated with Boa constrictor skin in Puerto Rico. Crystal’s dissertation research is focused on understanding how lipids regulate the Ca2+-activated Cl- channel TMEM16A. Her dissertation studies are supported by the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) and the Gilliam Fellows program from HHMI. Crystal received a travel award to attend the 2024 Annual Meeting of the Biophysical Society.


Jenny Miller

Graduate Student

Jenny graduated from Christopher Newport University with a B.S. in Neuroscience in 2016. She then got her MS in Forensic Science from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2018, where her thesis research focused on a novel approach for deconvoluting epithelial cell mixtures prior to STR profiling using fluorescence microscopy. After graduation, Jenny spent three years specializing in mitochondrial DNA analysis for the identification of human remains at the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory, and approximately one year performing Next Generation Sequencing on both clinical and research nuclear DNA samples in Pittsburgh. Jenny's dissertation research is focused on the conformational changes occurring in the TMEM16A channel upon PIP2 binding.


Kloee Connelly

Research Technician

Kloee joined our lab summer 2024 to study the zinc regulation of mammalian sperm. She returned to our lab as a research technician to study TMEM16A channels, during the summer of 2025.


Cora McKean

Research Technician

Cora is currently a Research Technician in the Carlson Lab, working to understand how zinc regulates mammalian sperm


Sara Carlton

Undergraduate Researcher

Sara joined our lab in 2023 and has been studying how zinc targets Xenopus laevis sperm and eggs, as well as mammalian sperm, to alter fertilization.


Sophia Mancinelli

Undergraduate Researcher

Sophia joined our lab fall 2024 and has been studying how zinc regulates mouse sperm.


Jake Zheng

Undergraduate Researcher

Jake joined our lab summer 2024 and has been studying how zinc regulates mouse sperm.