Susan Pusek, DRSc, has three decades of experience in clinical and translational research, training, and administration. As Director of Education at NC TraCS, she develops training programs, seminars, and workshops for biomedical researchers and their teams. She also serves as the liaison for research collaborations among local institutions.

Tessa Andermann, an infectious disease researcher, studies interactions between the gut microbiome and infections in people with immune system deficiencies—and to do some of her research, she needs bacterial samples isolated from immunocompromised patients. Andermann and her colleagues are creating a process to acquire those samples directly from the UNC hospital system.

Marcy Boynton, PhD, is an assistant professor in the UNC School of Medicine and a biostatistician at NC TraCS. In this role, she supports biomedical and behavioral researchers as they conduct studies focused on improving healthcare delivery and patient outcomes—providing guidance and statistics services to translational scientists.

Pain is a tricky thing to measure. Unlike metrics such as blood pressure, heart rate or even cancer presence—diagnosing pain relies almost entirely on the use of descriptive language. Morika Williams, an assistant professor at the UNC School of Medicine and a former KL2/K12 scholar with NC TraCS, began her career as a veterinarian—but is now studying pain in both animals and humans.