Speaker Bios, ASPIRE to Connect 2018
The sponsors of ASPIRE to Connect are excited to welcome our speakers for ASPIRE to Connect 2018.
Leah Lowe, PhD, Department Chair, Associate Professor of Theatre, Directing & Dramaturgy, Department of Theatre, Vanderbilt Univ,rsity
Associate Professor Leah Lowe earned her PhD from Florida State University, her MFA in Directing from the University of Minnesota, and her BA from Oberlin College. Since coming to Vanderbilt in the fall of 2011, she has directed productions of Carlo Gozzi’s The Green Bird and Dead Man’s Cell Phone by Sarah Ruhl. Her artistic interests include acting, directing, and devised performance. Her scholarly interests include popular American theatre of the nineteenth century, theories of comedy, and gender performance in theatre and drama. Her work has been published in Theatre Topics, Theatre Journal, and Theatre Symposium. She currently serves as the theatre department’s chair.
Joshua Fessel, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor of Medicine and Pharmacology, Department of Medicine, Vanderbilt University Medical Center
Dr. Fessel grew up in southern Illinois and southern Indiana and graduated Summa Cum Laude from the University of Evansville with a double major in Psychobiology and Chemistry in 1999. He enrolled in Vanderbilt’s Medical Scientist Training Program, completing his PhD in Pharmacology in 2003 and his MD in 2006 and graduating as the Founder’s Medalist for the School of Medicine. Dr. Fessel’s graduate work with L. Jackson Roberts, II, MD focused on free radical lipid biochemistry and involved the discovery of a novel class of lipid peroxidation products (isofurans) that exhibit sensitive modulation by oxygen concentrations in vitro and in vivo. Studies of oxygen dynamics led naturally to investigations in mitochondrial biology, and this has become a major focus of Dr. Fessel’s research. For his postdoctoral work with James West, PhD, Dr. Fessel identified multiple molecular metabolic pathways that are disrupted in pulmonary arterial hypertension in cells, animals, and humans with disease. His research interests focus on pathways that control molecular metabolism (with an emphasis on Krebs cycle control), mitochondrial function, and interactions between oxidative stress and cellular metabolism. He is the founder of Vanderbilt’s Mitochondria Interest Group, a multidisciplinary group of nearly 100 investigators who study all aspects of mitochondrial biology and metabolism. Dr. Fessel’s research is funded by the Parker B. Francis Foundation, the Vanderbilt Clinical and Translational Research Scholars program (part of the Vanderbilt CTSA), and Actelion Pharmaceuticals.