Dr. Özlem Yilmaz Research Lab
At Medical University of South Carolina
Dr. JoAnn Roberts, PhD MS
JoAnn Roberts was born in Bermuda and moved to South Florida in 1996. She attended the Florida Atlantic University (FAU) Honors College for her undergraduate degree in Biochemistry. There she completed and published an undergraduate thesis titled “Ion Chromatography Detection of Nitrite and Nitrate in Cured Meat: An Undergraduate Analytical or Instrumental Methods Laboratory Exercise” for which she also won an Outstanding Thesis Award upon graduation. She continued and completed her Master’s in Biomedical Science at FAU with research focused on molecular mechanisms of breast and prostate tumorigenesis prior to starting at the University of Florida (UF) for her PhD studies in August 2012.
JoAnn began her doctoral research in Dr. Özlem Yilmaz’ laboratory in May
2013 at the University of Florida and transferred with Dr. Yilmaz in January 2016. Her doctoral studies focus on Porphyromonas gingivalis’ ability to evade antibacterial NOX mechanisms and related-autophagy pathways in GECs.
She was a recipient of a special redox fellowship from Karolinska Institutet with MUSC. She also received NIH F31 scholarship to study P. gingivalis’ modulation of host epithelial antioxidant systems for intracellular bacterial survival.
Upon graduation from her PHD studies in Dr. Yilmaz' Lab, she became a Post-doctoral UPLIFT Fellow in UCLA and held an adjunct faculty position in Los Angeles Technical College. She is currently a Senior Associate Director | STEM Professor & Researcher | Faculty Developer at UCLA.