Sarah A. Dugger is a PhD candidate within the Department of Genetics & Development at Columbia University Medical Center, New York, New York, USA. Before her current graduate studies, Sarah trained as a genetic counsellor at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, USA, and worked in the prenatal field for four years in Dayton, Ohio, USA. She is now pursuing her thesis work in the laboratory of David Goldstein in the Institute for Genomic Medicine, where she is working to understand the underlying pathogenic mechanisms of a single patient's severe, genetic form of epilepsy, with the ultimate goal of identifying a potential therapy.