Lena van der Stap

Lena van der Stap is a 1st year PhD student in the SDSU-CGU Computational Science Program. She has a Bachelor of Science degree in Cell and Molecular Biology from San Diego State University in 2001. Her undergraduate research was performed at Rees-Stealy Research Foundation in the area of computational cardiology. She has since been a Research Assistant in the Molecular and Integrative Neurosciences Department at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, CA, working in

the area of the neuroscience of addiction, primarily on the effects of cocaine and alcohol abuse on brain regions involved in reward, stress, learning and memory. Her focus has been on biostatistics, gene expression analysis of laser-microdissected brain regions, epigenetic mechanisms in alcohol-dependent mice, namely changes in DNA methylation, and gene network reconstruction. Currently, while working in the CSRC and the SDSU Bioscience Center, she is obtaining training in applied math, computational methods for analyzing large datasets, bioinformatics, and additional high throughput molecular techniques in microbiology. She is currently working with Drs. Roberta Gottlieb and Scott Kelley on a comprehensive genomic approach to determine the relationship between Periodontal Disease and Cardiovascular Disease in young adults.