Engineering Hero: Treating Brain Cancer by Targeting Mutated Neural Pathways

In this seventh installment of Engineering Heroes, sponsored by Wind River, we’d like to introduce you to Dr. Karisa Schreck, an assistant professor of neurology, oncology, and neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins, where she also co-directs the BRAF Brain Tumor Center.

Dr. Schreck grew up with four brothers and knew from a very young age that she had passions for learning and helping people. So it made sense that when the time came for higher education, she pursued an MD-PhD. She combined multiple interests in medicine and biomedical engineering in this pursuit, and has been implementing her knowledge of neural networks in research of mutated proteins, like the BRAF mutation, that occur in patients with brain cancer in an attempt to develop a treatment or medicine to improve their prognosis.

But you can hear from Dr. Schreck herself, as well as her mentor Dr. Jaishri Blakely, in the podcast episode above. Stay tuned for more Engineering Heroes content!