When Natasha Raj-Derouin (née Natarajan) was doing her medical school rotations at Columbia University in New York City, she was thrilled to find a subspecialty that incorporated some of the lessons she had learned in the master’s program in stem cell biology and regenerative medicine at USC.

“What’s been really great is that there is a subspecialty within OB-GYN called Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility or REI, and it’s a field that has a huge basis in basic science,” she said. “A lot of the work we do has to do with embryology and an understanding of stem cell biology, to help fertilize embryos in vitro and then implant them into a patient.”

Raj-Derouin first fell in love with stem cell research when she was taking AP Biology at Beverly Hills High School. As a prize for winning a writing competition hosted by Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, she was awarded the opportunity to work in the UCLA laboratory of Jianyu Rao, who was studying how green tea affects stem cells.

As an undergraduate at USC, Raj-Derouin took the course MEDS 380 Stem Cells: Fact or Fiction, taught by Gage Crump, associate professor of stem cell biology and regenerative medicine. Before long, she had joined the Crump Lab and co-authored a study in Frontiers in Developmental and Cell Biology about how zebrafish regenerate arthritic joints.

To read more, visit https://stemcell.keck.usc.edu/where-are-they-now-masters-program-alumna-natasha-raj-derouin.