Courtney Nichole Willey

Education

• Bachelor of Arts in Integrative Biology, Minor in Sociology, Bowdoin College

Interests

Aging, Cancer, Cardiovascular, Development, Genomics, Metabolism, Molecular and Cellular Biology, Neuroscience, Stem Cells

Brief Biography

After the completion of her degree at Bowdoin College in 2020, Courtney found herself back home in her rural community of Downeast Maine due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As a first-generation student, she was determined to not let a pandemic interrupt her dreams of becoming a scientist, so she applied to The Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor. She was hired as a Research Assistant in the Korstanje lab studying the regenerative properties of the kidney, using the American Black bear and mouse as model organisms. Her experiences in this lab, prepared her to be a skilled scientist and sparked a passion for helping others through her research. 

Now as a graduate student in the University of Maine’s Graduate School of Biomedical Science and Engineering (GSBSE), she is continuing her research in the Korstanje lab, investigating Alport Syndrome (AS) — a rare condition that leads to kidney disease, hearing loss, and eye abnormalities. While the causal genes for AS are well characterized, individuals with similar genetic mutations display a wide range of variation in kidney function and age of onset, suggesting modifier genes may be responsible. She aims to identify some of these modifier genes in a large cohort of diverse mice that have AS. In addition to this, she is working to uncover what happens in the kidneys of these AS mice during pregnancy that may lead to differences in disease outcome.

Publications

• Willey C, Korstanje R. Sequencing and assembling bear genomes: the bare necessities. Front Zool. 2022 Nov 30;19(1):30. doi: 10.1186/s12983-022-00475-8. PMID: 36451195; PMCID: PMC9710173.