DMFTalk – Dr. Karen Ocorr, Flies in Space
October 13, 2020 @ 6:30 PM - 8:00 PM
DR. KAREN OCORR,
Assistant Professor in the Neuroscience and Aging Center at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute, La Jolla
Dr. Karen Ocorr will talk about her fascinating experiments with fruit flies conducted aboard NASA’s International Space Station. The study explores the impact of weightlessness on the heart. Why fruit flies? Humans have a lot in common with them. Each fruit fly carries roughly 75% of disease-causing genes and a similar heart structure to us. Dr. Ocorr will explain how her fruit flies traveling in space are our partners in helping to uncover a route to therapeutics that can be used to prevent or treat human cardiovascular disorders, both in space and on earth!
Dr. Karen Ocorr earned her BA at Lehigh University and her Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Wesleyan University. She was awarded an NIH Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Texas Medical School – Houston, as well as Stanford University. In 2004 she accepted a position at Sanford Burnham Prebys. She has published 68 peer-reviewed studies on heart disease using both the fruit fly and zebrafish cardiac models. She continues to collaborate with NASA scientists and is currently serving on the board of the American Society for Space and Gravitational Research, supporting mankind’s exploration of low earth orbit, the moon and beyond.