Manna Laboratory

I graduated from Spring Arbor University in 2001 with a major in Biochemistry and minor in Math. I earned my Ph.D. In Biomedical Sciences from the UMass Medical School Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences in 2009 in the Munson lab studying the role of yeast Vps45p in membrane fusion. I spent 3.5 years as a postdoctoral fellow at Colorado State University in the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Department studying the effects of post translational modifications on histone dimer interactions. In 2013 I became a faculty member at Kettering College. While there I taught Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, Genetics, Mechanisms of Human Diseases, initiated undergraduate research and served as the chair of the Human Biology Department. In October of 2022 I returned to the Munson lab as a Senior Research Scientist. I resumed my research on membrane fusion, focusing on the role of mammalian VPS45 variants during membrane fusion. In 2025 I became a Senior Research Associate at the Ohio State University in the Manna lab. There I use various molecular biology and biochemistry techniques to generate variants of a variety of proteins during directed evolutionary studies.

Email:    furgason.12@osu.edu