Erika Boerman’s passion for her work is palpable. The excitement grows in her eyes as she points to an image on her computer screen of a blood vessel made up of vibrant blues, greens and reds. She talks about her work with a $350,000 confocal microscope as her zen.
“I love talking about blood vessels to people because there is so much more going on that people don’t realize,” Boerman said in her narrow lab at the end of a quiet hallway in the MU Medical Sciences Building.
Boerman, an MU assistant professor of medical pharmacology and physiology, has received a $1.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to study the role of perivascular nerves in inflammatory bowel disease. Boerman plans to study the blood flow in mice and determine why inflammatory bowel disease impairs the blood vessels and nerves around them.