Julie Conkright

Biography

Julie Conkright supports Stowers investigators through the development of high-throughput assays to screen genomic (cDNA and RNAi) and compound libraries. Utilizing state-of-the-art robotic instrumentation, she performs high throughput automation of primary, secondary and counter screen assays in small microtiter formats and provides data analysis support to identify lead targets or compounds. In addition, she designs and builds de novo screening libraries for new applications in mammalian and non-mammalian systems using both cultured cells and whole organisms. Conkright received her dual bachelor degrees in biology and microbiology from Kansas State University and served as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute predoctoral intern during her senior year. At Cincinnati’s Children’s Medical Center, she studied surfactant biology and neonatal respiratory distress as part of her doctoral thesis and received her Ph.D. in molecular and developmental biology from the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. After completing a postdoctoral fellowship in Bill Balch’s laboratory at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, CA, where she worked on the molecular mechanism of alpha-1-antitrypsin (a1AT) secretion, Conkright moved to Florida to manage the Cell-based Screening Facility at The Scripps Research Institute in Jupiter, FL. She aided investigators in genomic and compound screening as well as participated in small molecule probe development as a part of a center-based initiative in the NIH Molecular Libraries Program. In 2010, Conkright was recruited to the Stowers Institute to establish an advanced screening core that can handle a wide array of high content imaging and biochemical technologies in mammalian and non-mammalian systems.

Research Interest

Novo screening libraries, Non-mammalian systems