The Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation has added Jaya Krishnan, Ph.D., and Heather Rice, Ph.D., to its scientific staff.
Krishnan has joined OMRF’s Genes and Human Disease Research Program from the Stowers Institute for Medical Research in Kansas City, where she completed her postdoctoral training.
Krishnan studies how some organisms can use high blood glucose and excess body fat without becoming ill to survive long periods with little nutrition. By understanding these survival strategies, Krishnan hopes to uncover new targets for treating human metabolic conditions like diabetes and obesity.
She received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Delhi and a doctorate in genome organization and gene regulation from the Center for Cellular and Molecular Biology in India.
Rice comes to the foundation from the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center. Her work in OMRF’s Aging and Metabolism Research Program will focus on Alzheimer’s disease.
This appointment is a return to OMRF for Rice. Originally from Watonga, Oklahoma, she began her research career with a summer internship at OMRF as a Sir Alexander Fleming Scholar while an undergraduate student at the University of Oklahoma.
Rice completed a doctorate in neurobiology at Harvard University and postdoctoral training at the VIB-KU Leuven Center for Brain and Disease Research in Belgium.
