Lab Members

  
Jill Weimer, PhD
Jill is an Associate Scientist in the Children’s Health Research Center and Assistant Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the Sanford School of Medicine, USD. Before joining the Children’s Health Research team at Sanford, Dr. Weimer completed a BS and PhD in Neuroscience at the University of Rochester and a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in the Neuroscience Center.


  
Jeremy Morgan
Jeremy graduated from USD in 2002 with a Bachelor’s degree in Biology Education and a minor in Chemistry. He then taught high school science for seven years before deciding to go back to school. Recently, we completed his masters work in the Basic Biomedical Sciences program with USD. Jeremy’s research is aimed at establishing the function of a novel CLN6/CRMP-2 signaling complex and how disruption in this complex leads to a rare lysosomal storage disorder.



 		  
 
Helen Magee
Helen graduated from Reed College in Portland, OR in 2009 with a Bachelor’s degree in Biology. Helen is the laboratory manager for the Weimer lab and is involved in several research projects, including understanding the role of the sialylation pathway in cortical brain development as well as defining a role for MARCKS in regulating neuronal polarity in the developing brain.

 
 

 
 Tara Nelson
Tarah is a 2009 graduate of Fort Lewis College in Durango, CO.  During her time as an undergraduate, Tarah completed a research to determine factors that govern prevalence and transmission of Sin Nombre virus, a hantavirus, in natural host populations.  As a part of the Weimer team, she works on defining the role of a novel CLN6/CRMP-2 signaling complex and exploring CRMP2, a protein mutated in a host of neurological disorders, might serve as an ideal candidate for targeted therapeutics.
 
 
  
   
Tiffin Duffy
Tiffin is a 2008 graduate of Iowa State University, receiving her bachelor’s degree in Microbiology. As a research associate in the Children’s Health Research Center, Tiffin oversees the day-to-day operations of the Sanford Reearch/USD Yeast 2-Hybrid Core. Tiffin is currently participating in projects aimed at identifying interacting partners for several known neuronal polarity proteins.
 
 
   
Seung-Yon Koh, PhD
Seung-Yon completed a Masters in Animal Science at Dan Kook University in Chonan, Korea before coming to South Dakota to pursue her PhD.  Her doctoral work at SDSU in the laboratory of Dr. David Francis focused on the characterization of the receptor binding domain of enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli K88ad.  Her focus in the Weimer lab is to understand the impact that various guanine exchange factors have on regulating the proliferation of intermediate progenitors (ie., basal/multipolar progenitors) in the developing cerebral cortex.  In addition to her work in the Weimer lab, Seung-Yon works at Biogenetic Services, Inc., in Brookings, SD.
 
   

Summer Interns:

 

  

Rachel Thornton
Rachel is a rising senior at Roosevelt High School in Sioux Falls and was one of four students selected as a PROMISE Scholars summer intern. Her work in the lab focuses on distinguishing unique functions for two near identical Small RhoGTPases by performing yeast 2-hybrid screening with unique protein domains.

 
   
Austin Reno
Austin is a second year MD/PhD candidate at USD-SSOM conducting a summer research internship.  As his research project, he investigated whether loss of GABAergic interneuron in  model of Juvenile Neuronal Ceroid Lipofuscinosis was a result of aberrant neurodevelop or a consequence of neuronal cell death later in life.