Margaret Murphy is a postdoctoral scholar in Analia Loria’s lab in pharmacology and nutritional sciences at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine.

Murphy, who started out as a nutritionist, is studying the effect of early-life stress on metabolic syndrome—a group of risk factors like obesity, elevated cholesterol and insulin resistance that together raise a person’s risk for heart disease, diabetes and stroke. Her own experience with overeating, following her parent’s divorce, makes this research personal for Murphy. “I’m very happy that I’m able to take some of the life experiences I’ve had and put that into my research,” Murphy says.

“When I joined the laboratory last year, Analia had started a pilot project in mice. They are first exposed to the maternal separation or the first ‘hit’ early in life to mimic chronic behavioral stress. Then we challenge these mice with a high-fat diet and measure their metabolic outcomes in adulthood. It’s very interesting because we’ve been studying both males and females and we find that even though both genders gain a significant amount of weight, it’s more exaggerated in the females. That coincides with what we see epidemiologically in humans.”

Murphy and Loria are featured on LabTV.com. This website features videos with medical researchers who tell where they came from, how they chose their career, what they do each day in the lab, and why they love it. LabTV’s founder, Jay Walker of TEDMED, said he started the site because if high school students can personally identify with a young medical researcher, they are far more likely to consider becoming one. LabTV’s network features more than 1,000 researchers working at dozens of leading universities, corporations, and the National Institutes of Health.