Uploaded January 2025 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Laura Newman, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Cell Biology
Transcript:
So what's really incredible about research is that you’re assembling a puzzle, but you don't have the full picture of the puzzle that you’re assembling until you’ve finished assembling it. But once you get that final picture, it's something that's new and can be incredibly transformative and change the way that you view the world around you. And that part of research is incredibly rewarding, and it's rewarding to see how that can drive humanity forward.
My name is Laura Newman, and I'm an assistant professor of cell biology. My research concerns how inflammation is initiated on a cellular level. And primarily, what we're interested in is how a little piece of the cell, called mitochondria, controls the initiation of inflammation.
We've all learned from our biology classes that mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell. However, they're way more interesting than that. Mitochondria originated from bacteria, and because of this, they have a wide ability to regulate how the cell responds to inflammation, including the fact that mitochondria are able to trick the cell into thinking that it’s been infected. If we can understand how mitochondria are able to do this, this will help us to develop new therapies to treat a wide variety of diseases where inflammation is dysregulated.
Laura Newman, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Cell Biology
Transcript:
So what's really incredible about research is that you’re assembling a puzzle, but you don't have the full picture of the puzzle that you’re assembling until you’ve finished assembling it. But once you get that final picture, it's something that's new and can be incredibly transformative and change the way that you view the world around you. And that part of research is incredibly rewarding, and it's rewarding to see how that can drive humanity forward.
My name is Laura Newman, and I'm an assistant professor of cell biology. My research concerns how inflammation is initiated on a cellular level. And primarily, what we're interested in is how a little piece of the cell, called mitochondria, controls the initiation of inflammation.
We've all learned from our biology classes that mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell. However, they're way more interesting than that. Mitochondria originated from bacteria, and because of this, they have a wide ability to regulate how the cell responds to inflammation, including the fact that mitochondria are able to trick the cell into thinking that it’s been infected. If we can understand how mitochondria are able to do this, this will help us to develop new therapies to treat a wide variety of diseases where inflammation is dysregulated.
