meet the team
Lauren received her B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Alabama and her Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign under the mentorship of Prof. Steve Zimmerman. There she became fascinated by RNA structure as a means for targeted therapies. She went on to study RNA folding thermodynamics in cells under the guidance of Profs. Dan Herschlag (Stanford) and Silvi Rouskin (Harvard Medical School). Inspired by her research in fundamental biochemistry and translational chemical biology, Lauren will be starting her lab at Texas A&M University in the Department of Chemistry to develop methods to measure and predict RNA folding and protein-binding in cells and modulate these interactions with small molecules for therapeutic intervention in cancer. She hopes that work in her lab will reveal core principles of RNA-mediated gene expression and uncover novel disease targets in oncology.
Email: ldhagler[at]tamu.edu
Lauren Hagler
Principal Investigator
graduate students
Megan Unger
University of Northern Iowa
Chris Williams
Hardin-Simmons University
research scientists
Emmanuel Osei-Frempong
Liverpool John Moores University
Nichele Deese
Winston Salem State University
Amanda Reid
University of Connecticut
Laura Ruemmele
Texas Woman’s University
Tanya Nguyen
Texas A&M University
Casper L’Esperance-Kerckhoff
Brandeis University
Jesus Damian Torres Campos
California State University-LA
undergraduate students
Ava Daly ‘28
Alana Goree ‘28
Jacob Hoeller ‘26
Matthew Mansfield ‘26
alumni
Asia Menard ‘28
Thomas Porter ‘26
Vanessa Forbes ‘25 (UG 2024)
Lauren Moore ‘25 (UG 2024-2025)
Maya Schauber (Fairfield University; REU 2025)