With a background as a Medical Physicist, my PhD-project (conducted in the Forssell-Aronsson Lab at University of Gothenburg) focused on peptide receptor radionuclide therapy of small intestine neuroendocrine tumors and biological effects of radiation. This research prompted a further interest in biology, and lead me to enter a postdoctoral research position in the Sarosiek Lab at Harvard School of Public Health, with a focus on the regulation of apoptotic priming in response to stress such as irradiation. Apoptosis is an evolutionarily-conserved form of cell death that is critical for normal development, tissue homeostasis, and cancer prevention. Abnormal rates of apoptosis are associated with many major diseases that impact human health worldwide, including neurodegeneration, heart failure and cancer. Despite this, little is known about the mechanisms that regulate cell death in healthy cells and their roles in maintaining human health. In brief, cellular damage releases pro-death proteins (“activators” of apoptosis), which can either be blocked by anti-apoptotic proteins, or induce apoptosis. The abundance of pro- and anti-apoptotic proteins varies between tissues, leading to differences in sensitivity to apoptotic signals. This sensitivity can be measured by BH3 profiling, which detects the extent of apoptosis induction in response to “activator” peptides. The aims of my current project are to measure apoptotic priming at a single-cell level in mammalian tissues during development, aging, and disease progression, and subsequently identify the cellular mechanisms responsible for regulation of apoptosis.