Dr. Shardell Spriggs joined the National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), Division of Translational Research in 2016 as a Health Program Specialist and works directly with the NIH Countermeasures Against Chemical Threats (CounterACT) Program.
Shardell has dedicated her career to diverse scientific study and possesses a strong background in the areas of academic research, translational science, public health-oriented research grants, and project and resource management.
Shardell received her Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Maryland Baltimore County in the laboratory of Michael F. Summers, Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Her research at UMBC worked toward characterizing interactions among essential elements within the HIV-1 5´-UTR to elucidate the structural dependence of virion packaging and identify novel drug targets in the treatment of HIV/AIDS using NMR Spectroscopy.
Shardell was a recipient of a Competitive National Research Service Award from NIGMS and a Meyerhoff Graduate Research Assistant while at UMBC among winning other prestigious awards.
Dr. Spriggs taught general inorganic chemistry lecture and lab to undergraduates at a local college before starting her post-doctoral fellowship with David Weber at the University of Maryland School of Medicine where she conducted translational research within the Center for Biomolecular Therapeutics. Her work focused on using SAR (Structure-Activity Relationship) by NMR to develop a fragment library screening protocol to identify hits that would selectively differentiate structurally homologous cancer biomarkers in solution.
Dr. Spriggs has participated in and served on a number of diversity initiative panels, such as the MARC U*STAR Program, the Meyerhoff Program, ADVANCE and UMBC Graduate Horizons and continues to be interested in increasing diversity and exposure for underrepresented groups in the STEAM fields.