MD/PhD Student
Penn State College of Medicine, Department of Neurosurgery
My name is Timothy Helmuth and I am a fifth year MSTP student at the Penn State College of Medicine. I am conducting my graduate research in the lab of Dr. James Connor, PhD (Distinguished Professor of Neuroscience and Anatomy, Vice Chair for Research, Department of Neurosurgery). Dr. Connor is an expert in iron regulation and has a strong track record of training physician-scientists and supporting their scientific curiosity to improve patient health. As such, my dissertation focuses on intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH), a devastating type of stroke characterized by an 80% disability rate at 6-months and a 45% mortality rate at 1-year. Specifically, I aim to understand how blood breakdown and left-over iron induce ferroptosis within the brain parenchyma and how the regulation of iron can be leveraged to lessen the associated cellular damage. Through this work, I collaborate with several clinicians and scientists. Notably, I work closely with Dr. Scott Simon MD, a Professor and Cerebrovascular Neurosurgeon at the Penn State College of Medicine. My time seeing ICH patients and surgical cases with Dr. Simon has allowed me to continue to develop my clinical skills and translational research perspectives. Together we have developed a set of studies to evaluate the role of iron regulatory proteins in ICH recovery that have secured internal funding from the Clinical-Translational Science Institute and the Comprehensive Health Studies program at Penn State. During the summer of 2023, our team secured additional funding from the Brain Aneurysm Foundation and the Bee Foundation to study the role of genetic variations in iron metabolism on patient outcomes following aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage. These collaborations have further motivated me to pursue a career where the intersection of research and medicine meet to satisfy my scientific curiosity and devotion to patient-centered care.