Taylor Jones, MS

PhD Student

Taylor Jones is a PhD student in the Miller Laboratory at the Medical University of South Carolina, Department of Neurosurgery. Her research focuses on the molecular and cellular mechanisms of neonatal brain injury, with particular interest in how hemoglobin drives cellular dysfunction following intraventricular hemorrhage (IVH), as well as utilizing mass spectrometry to characterize IVH.

She received dual Bachelor of Science degrees in Chemistry and Biology, followed by a Master's degree in Biology, from Virginia Commonwealth University. As a graduate student in the laboratory of Dr. Jason Newton, she trained extensively in mass spectrometry–based lipidomics, using LC-MS/MS for her thesis work on the neurotoxic cyanobacterial compound BMAA and its misincorporation into sphingolipid metabolic pathways. She applied similar mass spectrometry techniques to study fingolimod (FTY720) metabolism and blood-brain barrier penetration in a childhood lysosomal storage disorder known as Niemann-Pick Type C1 disease.

In the Miller Lab, Taylor utilizes MALDI spatial multi-omics to investigate how hemoglobin exposure alters cellular function after IVH and how these changes affect white matter development.