Speaker Bio: Prachee Avasthi, Ph.D.

Prachee Avasthi is an Assistant Professor of Anatomy and Cell Biology at the University of Kansas Medical Center. Using a unicellular green alga as a model system, Prachee’s NIH funded laboratory (avasthilab.org) uses chemical biology, biochemistry, genetics and quantitative live cell imaging to uncover novel mechanisms regulating assembly of the ubiquitous cellular antenna, the cilium. Prachee is a strong advocate for improved publication practices and serves on the board of directors for ASAPbio http://asapbio.org/about-us) and eLife (https://elifesciences.org/about/people/directors). She also founded the online peer-mentoring community for junior faculty, New PI Slack (https://newpislack.wordpress.com) and advocates for early-career scientists on the steering committee of rescuing biomedical research (http://rescuingbiomedicalresearch.org/about/steering-committee-bios/). Prachee received her Ph.D. in Neuroscience in 2009 from the lab of Wolfgang Baehr at the University of Utah. She then completed her postdoctoral studies with Wallace Marshall at the University of California in San Francisco.