Cassie Rowe PhD

Education

2019 PhD American University, Washington D.C.
2016 M.S. American University, Washington D.C.
2014 B.S. Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY

Biography

Dr. Rowe joined the Cellular Biology and Regenerative Medicine Program at the Uniformed Services University as a contractor at the Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine (HJF) in 2019 under the mentorship of Dr. Thomas Davis. Dr. Rowe has an interdisciplinary background and training with over 8 years of experience in biological sciences, molecular biology, and neurosciences, with specific training in acute toxicology, neuroendocrinology, traumatic brain injury, blood-brain barrier disruption, cognition, neuroinflammation, and neuro-musculoskeletal injuries. Her current research interest involves the traumatic injury state, specifically neuromuscular extremity trauma and the neurobiological and physiological consequences underlying neuro-related disease conditions/pathologies (trauma-induced brain injury). She is also interested in sex-differences in disease states and the underlying molecular mechanisms of inflammatory pathways that regulate disease onset and progression. Dr. Rowe is involved in several projects related to the underlying neuro-immunological changes following military-relevant polytraumatic injury in many different model systems that give rise to disease pathologies. Dr. Rowe oversees all of the ongoing studies in the laboratory related to animal model development and surgeries, downstream proteomic/molecular assays, histological analyses, serves as the laboratory manager and mentors research assistants and student interns, and conducts data analyses using bioinformatics approach. Dr. Rowe is actively driving research characterizing region-specific transcriptomic level changes in the post-traumatic injury state of several rodent models of extremity polytrauma.

Dr. Rowe embarked on her scientific career at the Zebrafish Ecotoxicology, Neuropharmacology, and Vision Laboratory led by Dr. Victoria Connaughton at American University (AU). For her dissertation work, Dr. Rowe explored long-term complications of prolonged hyperglycemia using a zebrafish model. Dr. Rowe received several internal funding grants as well as an external research grant through Sigma XI, Scientific Research Society for her work. During her time at AU, she was the recipient of several awards for both academic/research performance and leadership. Dr. Rowe also worked in a neuroendocrinology lab under the direction of Dr. Colin Saldana where she conducted a biochemical aromatase activity assay as a direct measure of aromatase changes in the brain following peripheral injection of lipopolysaccharide in the zebra finch model of secondary injury. Dr. Rowe received her PhD in Behavior, Cognition, and Neuroscience from American University in 2019.

Representative Bibliography