She received her PhD at the University of Washington in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics working with Bertil Hille to uncover the role that CatSper channels play as mammalian sperm prepare to fertilize an egg. For her postdoctoral studies, she continued on at UW and worked with Bill Zagotta. In the Zagotta laboratory, Dr. Carlson performed structural and functional studies on voltage-gated potassium channels in the Ether-a-go-go family. Dr. Carlson now has her own group that studies both the ion channels important for the earliest events of fertilization and how these channels are regulated. Photo courtesy of Joel Rosenbaum.