About Rylee

Rylee is a recent graduate of West Virginia University with a Bachelor of Science in Immunology and Medical Microbiology and a first year PhD student at the University of Pittsburgh in the Program of Microbiology and Immunology. She worked as an undergraduate research assistant in Dr. Gordon P. Meares' laboratory. There, She studied the role of Liver Kinase B 1 in antigen presentation and processing gene expression in astrocytes during inflammation.

As Rylee grew up in rural Pennsylvania, she watched her parents navigate the workforce and did not hear much about college education or the science field. However, her parents were very intelligent and worked hard for everything they had to give Rylee and her brother the best childhood. In 2016, her parents opened their own business with the help of her and her brother. Her brother operated the business day to day while her parents worked their fulltime jobs, and they operated the business behind the scenes and on the weekends. During this time, Rylee was taking chemistry courses in high school and was in awe over the preparation of aspirin and decided drug development was of interest to her even though it was an unfamiliar field.

You would probably never guess this, but Rylee's mother, the one who was working fulltime and helping to open a new business, has Multiple Sclerosis (MS). MS is a neurodegenerative autoimmune disease in which the myelin sheath surrounding nerves is destroyed and can result in both cognitive and physical disability. Her mother was diagnosed in 2001 and had been taking a weekly injection for the majority of Rylee's life. While this medication helps to stop the damage of MS most times, sometimes it fails, and it also has negative side effects. MS can flare up and cause new damage within the central nervous system, which is termed a relapse, and causes symptoms such as numbness and weakness in the limbs. Rylee watched her mother have a few relapses throughout her childhood, saw the weekly side effects of her medication, and was constantly curious about MS and why it had not been cured.

Putting together her interest in pharmaceutical development and curiosity of MS, Rylee's career goal is to become a full-time researcher dedicating her career to elucidating curative therapeutics for MS. Some say it is a big stretch to want to cure MS and that is not possible, but many things have been said to be impossible, just like Rylee's mother walking without assistance and functioning as if she does not have MS 20 years after her diagnosis.

In 2021, Rylee was also diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis making her career goal even more personal. She had to begin an aggressive treatment that is immunosuppressive and that has been challenging yet rewarding. The medication is very effective at minimizing neurological damage and relapses, but the side effects can be difficult to manage at times. Due to this, Rylee's career goal has expanded a bit to include finding therapeutics that are just as effective as immunosuppressive drugs without having the side effect of immunosuppression.

Rylee also has a passion for STEM outreach, specifically helping first generation students learn their potential. She hopes to be more involved in outreach during her graduate studies and start her own project at some point.