Dr. Mandy Blackburn earned a B.S. in chemistry from the University of New Mexico in 2000. After brief stints in the Navy and in a quality control laboratory, Dr. Blackburn went on to earn a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from the University of Florida in 2010. Her graduate research was completed in the laboratory of Professor Gail Fanucci and focused on the protein conformations and conformational changes of HIV protease using pulsed and continuous-wave electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. Dr. Blackburn then completed a postdoctoral appointment at the University of Massachusetts Amherst with Dr. Lila Gierasch where she continued to use EPR and NMR to study the protein conformations and conformational changes of HSP70. In 2013, she served the chemistry department of the Fitchburg State University as a visiting assistant professor and then joined the faculty of UCM as an assistant professor in the fall of 2014. Her research program investigates the stability of coiled-coil peptides based on variations in the peptide's primary sequence.