Carsten earned a BS in Biology with a minor in Chemistry from the University of Minnesota-Duluth in 2015.  While earning his undergraduate degree, he began his research career studying landscape ecology and analytical water chemistry at the Natural Resources Research Institute.  This research was to establish causal links between land use decisions and impacted waterways.

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Following completion of his degree, Carsten began working as a Biologist at the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Research and Development.  There he studied thyroid hormone toxicology. This work was establishing chemical risk to human and environmental health, utilizing high-throughput screening and in vivo models.

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Beginning in 2018, Carsten began to earn his MS in Biology specializing in Regenerative Medicine from Cal Poly SLO in San Luis Obispo, CA.  This program is funded by the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine and is focused on getting young scientists experience in utilizing stem cells to model and treat disease. In the first year of his program, his research at Cal Poly focused on developing novel, cheap molecular biological tools to diagnose and model disease.

 

The second year of the MS program has brought him to Rubedo Life Sciences to develop new tools for assessing cellular senescence.