Please join us! 

Drs. Elizabeth Murphy, Senior Investigator, Laboratory of Cardiac Physiology and  Courtney Fitzhugh, Assistant Clinical Investigator, Laboratory of Sickle Mortality Prevention of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) and members of the Women Scientist Advisors group at NIH will host a mini symposium at UMBC.  

 

Elizabeth Murphy, Ph.D.  

Elizabeth Murphy received her B.A. in 1974 and her Ph.D. in biochemistry/biophysics in 1980 from the University of Pennsylvania, where she was also a research fellow. From 1980 to 1983, she was a postdoctoral fellow and assistant research professor at Duke University Medical Center (DUMC). Before joining the NHLBI in 2006 as the head of the Cardiac Physiology Section, she was the head of the Cell Biology Group at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. She was an adjunct professor in the Division of Physiology, Department of Cell Biology at DUMC between 1984 and 2009. She became a Fellow of the American Heart Association in 2001 and a Fellow of the International Society for Heart Research in 2007; she received the NHLBI Award for Outstanding Mentorship in 2011. Dr. Murphy has authored or co-authored more than 125 papers and more than 45 invited chapters and reviews. She is senior guest editor for Circulation, a consulting editor for Circulation Research, and associate editor for the Journal of Molecular and Cellular Cardiology. Dr. Murphy is a member of the American Heart Association-Council of Basic Cardiovascular Research, American Physiological Society, and International Society for Heart Research.

Research Interests

In the heart, interruption of the blood supply  can result in cardiac cell death and irreversible muscle damage. Dr. Murphy’s laboratory studies the molecular mechanisms involved in cardiac cell death, as well as the mechanisms that protect the heart against damage. The knowledge gained from these studies may help identify novel therapies to reduce cardiac injury during ischemia and reperfusion.

Courtney Fitzhugh, M.D.

Courtney Fitzhugh received her B.S. magna cum laude from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1996, and her M.D. from the University of California, San Francisco in 2001. During medical school, Dr. Fitzhugh participated in the NIH Clinical Research Training Program, where she studied with Dr. John Tisdale at the NHLBI. After receiving her M.D., Dr. Fitzhugh completed a joint residency in internal medicine and pediatrics at Duke University Medical Center, and in 2005 she did a combined adult hematology and pediatric hematology-oncology fellowship at the NIH and Johns Hopkins Hospital. Dr. Fitzhugh returned to the NHLBI in 2007 and was appointed as Assistant Clinical Investigator in 2012. She is a member of the American Society of Hematology.

Research Interests

Dr. Fitzhugh is exploring new avenues of hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) transplantation for sickle cell disease (SCD), while also studying the currently underexplored cardiovascular complications arising due to this genetic blood disorder.