Biography

Dr. Coulson- Thomas earned her B.S. in Biomedicine, her M.S. in Biochemistry and PhD. in Molecular Biology at the Federal University of Sao Paulo (UNIFESP). Dr. Coulson- Thomas then completed a postdoctoral fellowship with Prof. Winston Kao at the Department of Ophthalmology, University of Cincinnati, and then with Prof. James Fawcett at the Department of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Cambridge. In 2016 she joined UHCO as faculty in Vision Sciences. Her lab takes a unique interdisciplinary approach to study the extracellular matrix in stem cell biology, corneal development and pathology, corneal wound healing, dry eye disease, and inflammation. The current ongoing projects in her lab are 1. Characterizing the role of the extracellular matrix in Meibomian gland development and pathology, 2. Characterizing the limbal stem cell niche and how it supports limbal epithelial stem cells, 3. Understanding mechanisms that regulate corneal wound healing, and 1. Characterizing how the extracellular matrix regulates inflammatory cell infiltration in the aging lacrimal gland.