Zahara Keulen

Class of 2019

Education: BS in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology at UCSC, and MS in Biological Sciences at Cal Poly

 

Biography

Zahara sees stem cell technology as the next medical Swiss Army knife: a multipurpose tool capable of performing a wide range of tasks with incredible specificity. The expanding research and clinical applications of stem cells inspired her to study regenerative medicine. She is particularly interested in methods for guiding immune cell development in vitro. With the skills she gains in the Regenerative Medicine Program, Zahara plans to pursue a PhD in Biomedical Science and work on developing stem cell-derived immunotherapies for cancer, autoimmune disease, and other persistent medical problems.

Zahara Keulen is interning at the Salk Institute of Biological Studies, in the Gage Lab. There she studies microglia, the resident macrophages of the brain. Although microglia have roles in synaptic maintenance, neuroinflammation, and neurodegeneration, a lot remains to be discovered about these unique cells. Key transcription factors have been identified that are primarily expressed in microglia, and which have severe neurological phenotypes when knocked out. Zahara is working on making microglial lines in which these factors are overexpressed, and studying what happens to microglia function in vitro when key transcription factors are overexpressed or knocked out.