Bradley McConnell, PhD, Assistant Professor
Brad's B.S. degree in Biology was from The Pennsylvania State University, and his Ph.D. in Physiology and Biophysics was from Case Western Reserve University. Brad worked as a graduate student with Dr. Meredith Bond at The Cleveland Clinic Foundation where he worked on the regulation of beta-adrenergic pathway in hypertrophied and failing hearts. He worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School in the laboratory of Drs. Christine and Jonathan Seidman, studying the physiological processes of human genetic pathologies that alter cardiac structure and function. At the University of Maryland, Brad's research interests are focused on investigating strategies to improve cardiac function during heart failure using molecular, biochemical, cellular and physiological technologies.

Linda Lund, PhD, Research Associate
Linda's undergraduate degree was in Biology/Chemistry from Portland State University, Portland, Oregon. She received a Ph.D. from Oregon Health Sciences University, Dept. of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (’92). Her post-graduate studies were done at Case Western Reserve University, Dept. of Neuroscience in Cleveland, Ohio where her work focused on CaM Kinase II, regulation of cytoskeletal polymerization, and the intracellular transport of vesicle-associated and soluble proteins using rat peripheral nerves. Linda's current work in the Bond lab is related to the intermediate filament protein, synemin, which is found at adhesion sites on the sarcolemma of cardiac myocytes, and is also perinuclear and found at Z-lines. Synemin localizes PKA near substrates and is the first intermediate filament protein identified as an AKAP. Current studies focus on understanding the role of PKA localized by synemin on the formation and stabilization of the adhesion sites that form between heart cells. 

Sabrina Manni, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow
Sabrina obtained a degree in Biological Science at the University of Padova, Italy, in 2000, as an undergraduate student in the Department of Biology in the lab of Elisabetta Bergantino. She was a graduate student in the lab of Dr. Ernesto Carafoli in the Department of Biological Chemistry, University of Padova, Italy, where she obtained a PhD in Biochemistry and Biophysics in 2004. The aim of Sabrina's PhD study was to evaluate the specific abilities of the calcium transporter to control calcium signals in different organelles of the cells in health and disease using aequorin probes. Following Sabrina's graduate studies, she joined the laboratory of Meredith Bond in the Department of Physiology, University of Maryland, Baltimore as a post-doctoral fellow.Sabrina tests the hypothesis that modulation of PKA: AKAP interaction by changes in the phosphorylation state of RII alters the cardiac contractile response to β-adrenergic stimulation. In particular she is investigates the effect of RII phosphorylation on RII: AKAP interaction in neonatal cardiomyocytes and in rat hearts in vivo. Adenoviral gene transfer of RII mutants (mutation in Ser 96; the RII phosphorylation site) are used to effect changes in RII:AKAP binding.

Jaclyn Kerr, Graduate Student
A native of Michigan, Jaclyn earned her undergraduate degree in Microbiology from the University of Georgia, where she was also involved in research on maternal effects on evolution in Drosophila in Daniel Promislow's laboratory. After gaining her Bachelors of Science, Jaclyn returned to Ann Arbor, MI to work as a research assistant at Pfizer for two years under Stephen Rapundalo. Following that, Jaclyn joined the PhD program in Physiology at the University of Maryland in 2003, and is currently funded by the Cardiovascular Training Grant at UMB. In Dr. Bond's lab, Jaclyn is working on identifying the proteins involved in PKA signalling via the intermediate filament protein, synemin, and its role in the development of heart failure.