Samantha Ann Brugmann is an American developmental biologist. She is an associate professor at the

University of Cincinnati The University of Cincinnati (UC or Cincinnati, informally Cincy) is a public university, public research university in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States. It was founded in 1819 and had an enrollment of over 53,000 students in 2024, making it the ...

Department of Surgery and is currently studying the development of, as well as diseases related to, the cranium and face (craniofacial). Brugmann's research focuses on the function of the primary

cilium The cilium (: cilia; ; in Medieval Latin and in anatomy, ''cilium'') is a short hair-like membrane protrusion from many types of eukaryotic cell. (Cilia are absent in bacteria and archaea.) The cilium has the shape of a slender threadlike pr ...

and how it affects craniofacial development as well as the development of

neural crest cells The neural crest is a ridge-like structure that is formed transiently between the epidermal ectoderm and neural plate during vertebrate development. Neural crest cells originate from this structure through the epithelial-mesenchymal transition, an ...

Education

Brugmann completed a Bachelor of Arts in cell and molecular biology from

Tulane University The Tulane University of Louisiana (commonly referred to as Tulane University) is a private research university in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. Founded as the Medical College of Louisiana in 1834 by a cohort of medical doctors, it b ...

in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1998. She then got her Ph.D. in genetics at

Columbian College of Arts and Sciences The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences (known as Columbian College or CCAS) is the College of Arts and Sciences, college of liberal arts and sciences of the George Washington University, in Washington, D.C. CCAS is the largest school at George ...

in 2004. Her dissertation was titled, ''The induction and function of xenopus six 1 in cranial placode development''. In 2010, Brugmann then finished her postdoctoral research fellowship studying chemical and systems biology at Stanford University.

Work and studies

Brugmann currently works at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, having been there since 2011, and studies craniofacial development and the diseases it involves. She prefers to do her research on avian embryos such as chick, quail, and duck, only occasionally returning to ''

Xenopus laevis The African clawed frog (''Xenopus laevis''), also known as simply xenopus, African clawed toad, African claw-toed frog or the ''platanna'') is a species of African aquatic frog of the family Pipidae. Its name is derived from the short black ...

.'' Her goals are to find a way to both understand the mechanisms that lead to craniofacial malformations as well as how to develop

neural crest The neural crest is a ridge-like structure that is formed transiently between the epidermal ectoderm and neural plate during vertebrate development. Neural crest cells originate from this structure through the epithelial-mesenchymal transition, ...

cells into various skeletal tissues so that they can be used for repairing craniofacial malformations through surgery. As recently as 2021, Brugmann published a paper in which she and her team found 1609 genes that are in close proximity to Gli target genes within the mandibular prominence. After

gene ontology The Gene Ontology (GO) is a major bioinformatics initiative to unify the representation of gene and gene product attributes across all species. More specifically, the project aims to: 1) maintain and develop its controlled vocabulary of gene and ...

analysis, they were able to conclude that these 1609 genes are important in

cell cycle progression The cell cycle, or cell-division cycle, is the sequential series of events that take place in a cell that causes it to divide into two daughter cells. These events include the growth of the cell, duplication of its DNA (DNA replication) and s ...

ossification Ossification (also called osteogenesis or bone mineralization) in bone remodeling is the process of laying down new bone material by cells named osteoblasts. It is synonymous with bone tissue formation. There are two processes resulting in t ...

, and

osteoblast Osteoblasts (from the Greek combining forms for " bone", ὀστέο-, ''osteo-'' and βλαστάνω, ''blastanō'' "germinate") are cells with a single nucleus that synthesize bone. However, in the process of bone formation, osteoblasts fu ...

differentiation. Through these discoveries, there is now a better starting line for the cause, or causes, of ciliopathic micrognathia (or the development of a small jaw).

Awards

Brugmann received a series of three awards while at Stanford University. The first of which was the Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Awards for Individual Postdoctoral Fellows (F32) in 2006. The following awards was a Pediatric Research Fund-Child Health Research Program Grant in 2009, quickly followed by an NIH Pathway to Independence Award (K99/R00) in 2010 for her research on, and subsequent paper 'The emerging face of primary cilia'. In 2016 Brugmann received an award from President Obama known as The

Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers The Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) is the highest honor bestowed by the United States federal government on outstanding scientists and engineers in the early stages of their independent research careers. Th ...

Then, in 2017, she received The Sustaining Outstanding Achievement in Research (SOAR) award for her research in neural crest cells development in hopes of finding a way to repair malformations in craniofacial structures.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Brugmann, Samantha Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Tulane University alumni 21st-century American biologists American women biologists 21st-century American women scientists University of Cincinnati faculty Columbian College of Arts and Sciences alumni Developmental biologists Recipients of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers