Project Leader
Dr. Goods is currently an Assistant Professor of Engineering at The Thayer School of Engineering. She received her PhD in Biological Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2017 where she focused on using transcriptomics to characterize immune cells in the central nervous system, revealing broadly dysfunctional gene programs in the context of disease. She then completed her postdoctoral training with Dr. Alex Shalek at the Broad Institute, the Ragon Institute, and the Institute for Medical Engineering and Sciences at MIT where she used single-cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-seq) to understand how cells in breastmilk change over the course of human lactation, revealing novel subsets of cells involved in milk production and immune cells, like macrophages, that may be tolerogenic.
Her work is broadly focused on creating tools, approaches, and the requisite biological knowledge to address clinical problems in reproductive health. The lab currently focuses on: (1) understanding the role of immune cells in reproductive conditions like pregnancy, lactation, and uterine disease, (2) exploring the impact of hormones on immune cell function, (3) using in vitro systems to study lactation and ovulation, and (4) combining systems biology approaches and general ‘omics, like scRNA-seq, to understand reproductive processes, with applications in drug discovery.
The long-term goal of Dr. Goods’ research is to improve the lives of people by building a better understanding of immunology and reproductive tissues, and translating those insights into therapeutics, diagnostics, and novel ways of both studying and monitoring reproductive and overall health.