Graduate Profile

As an undergraduate student at Mt. St. Mary's College, Jeanine Pignatelli was accepted to Upstate’s SURF summer program before her senior year.

When she was in the SURF program, she got to work with microscopes that were worth $500,000 to $750,000. "Who gets the opportunity to do that?" Jeanine said. "Not many people!"

She found that she liked research—and SUNY Upstate—so much that she applied nowhere else.

During her first year in the PhD program, when all students spend 10-week rotations in three different labs, Jeanine found her niche. She rotated in Biochemistry and in Christopher Turner&rdsuo;s lab in Cell and Developmental Biology, and decided on Turner’s lab.

Jeanine won a $25,000 National Cancer Center grant for her work with cell adhesion proteins in tumors. Jeanine received her PhD in August 2012, and obtained a postdoctoral position at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

Jeanine is pictured working in the lab in our Upstate Difference video.