Marzieh Akhlaghpour, PhD, received her bachelor of science in molecular biology with honors from the University of California, Irvine (UCI), and a bachelor of arts in accounting and business from California State University, Northridge (CSUN). During her time at UCI she studied the molecular mechanisms of how coronaviruses, such as SARS, rearrange host cell membranes to aid the viral life cycle. Prior to joining our PhD program, she worked in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Cedars-Sinai under the mentorship of Margareta Pisarska, MD, where she investigated the role of different members of the TGF-ß family in trophoblast function and placentation as they relate to adverse pregnancy outcomes. She joined the Cedars-Sinai Graduate Program and completed her thesis at the Inflammatory Bowel and Immunobiology Research Institute under the mentorship of Dermot McGovern, MD and Kathrin Michelsen, MD. Her thesis project focused on identifying genetic variation specific to Crohn’s disease patients with perianal complications and characterizing candidate variants with cellular and molecular functional studies.