Dr. Caitlin Francis

Biography

Caitlin completed her PhD in Molecular Cellular Biophysics at the University of Denver in 2023, where she took an interdisciplinary approach to investigate small GTPase-mediated intracellular protein trafficking in the endothelium. For her graduate work, she was awarded the University of Denver's College of Natural Sciences & Mathematics Research Excellence Award in 2022. She began her postdoctoral fellowship at Yale in Dr. Anne Eichmann's lab, where her primary research focus addresses blood vessel development and integrity in patients with Progeria. Caitlin aims to elucidate how nuclear membrane scaffolding dysfunction caused by Progeria impacts intracellular protein trafficking and organellar dynamics. Her investigations target angiogenesis in the endometrium and fatty acid trafficking in cardiovascular endothelial cells. Her long-term goal is to continue building tissue-specific in vitro 3-dimensional blood vessel assays to study protein trafficking and organellar morphology in an effort to bridge the disciplines of physiology and cell biology.

Research Interests