Alumni Reflections

From an early age, Erin Schuler knew that she wanted to have a positive impact on the world, and her interests drew her to science. 

As an undergraduate, Schuler worked at St. Elizabeth's Youngstown Hospital, a community hospital in Youngstown, Ohio. There, she conducted clinical research while also conducting bench-top research at Youngstown State University. From these experiences, Schuler knew that she was interested in translational research, bridging fundamental science with applied science. "It's very rewarding to see how fundamental science can be used to develop new tools or to understand real world problems from the ground up," says Schuler. When she made the decision to pursue the PhD, the desire to do translational research led Schuler to the Laney Graduate School's chemistry program. 

According to Schuler, her dissertation, titled Investigating Fundamental Mechanisms of Peptide Insertion into Membranes, "is focused on protein insertion into membranes. Aside from viruses inserting proteins into host cells to help facilitate infectivity, this process affects a number of aspects of cellular function, including: membrane protein folding, immune response, cellular signaling and communication." The second half of Schuler's dissertation specifically focused on peptides derived from influenza hemagglutinin protein, which helps influenza recognize cells to infect. "Taking what we learned from the model systems of protein insertion, we focused on understanding how specific parts of hemagglutinin protein fold in order to facilitate protein insertion into the host membrane. Our hope is that these model studies can help us understand the details of how influenza hemagglutinin protein works, which may be helpful somewhere down the line for understanding how to treat or prevent the infection."

Schuler says that her dissertation is one component of a much larger goal in the Dyer Lab, which is to characterize dynamic relationships between membranes and proteins that are essential to viral host invasion.

The Laney Advantage

While a graduate student at Laney, Schuler used LGS Professional Development Support Funds to attend conferences. "Sharing your research with the science community and other people working in your field is important in advancing both your scientific field and science as a whole." Schuler was also one of four students that helped to initiate the graduate chapter of the Association of Women in Science, serving as vice president. 

Schuler earned her PhD in Chemistry in 2015. She is currently a postdoctoral research fellow in the Dyer Lab at Emory.