Dr. Colleen Carpenter-Swanson

Colleen Carpenter-Swanson is an assistant professor of biology at the University of Richmond. She received her B.A. in chemistry from Wesleyan University and a Ph.D. in pharmacology from the University of Michigan. She did her postdoctoral training at the University of California, San Francisco, in the laboratory of Dr. Scott Baraban. The low cost and high-throughput scalability of zebrafish make it an attractive, cost-effective organism for drug discovery, and Carpenter-Swanson’s scientific interests surround modeling neurological diseases such as epilepsy in zebrafish in hopes of finding new, effective treatments for these disorders. Her current work focuses on severe pediatric genetic epilepsies, particularly Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome. She is also passionate about science communication and education, especially with regard to making science accessible to the public. Carpenter-Swanson is a member of numerous scientific societies, including the Society for Neuroscience and the International Zebrafish Society, and has presented her work at multiple national and international conferences.