Faculty & Scientific Staff

Sarah received her BS in chemical engineering from the University of South Carolina in 2004. She then joined the Medical Scholars Program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign/University of Illinois Chicago College of Medicine between 2008-2016. She worked in the lab of Dr Rohit Bhargava to obtain her MS (2010) and PhD (2013) in bioengineering. She focused on understanding the tumor microenvironment in breast cancer, and used label-free vibrational spectroscopic imaging and 3D cell co-culture methods to identify patterns that lead to resistance to endocrine therapies. She then moved to Seattle in 2016 to join the University of Washington for a clinical residency in Internal Medicine (2016-2019) and stayed on for fellowship in Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine. She is currently a senior research fellow at UW and a visiting scientist/post-doctoral fellow at BRI, which she joined in 2021.

Her clinical and research interest is Interstitial Lung Disease, and in particular the balance between lung tissue injury/inflammation, repair, and fibrosis. She uses RNA-seq and high parameter flow cytometry to identify macrophage populations in lung injury and in interstitial lung diseases. In her free time, she enjoys gravel biking and baking fancy cakes.