My book project, Sickle Cells to Super Cells: The Alluring Genetic Cure for Sickle Cell Disease, traces the rise of gene therapy as a curative frontier for sickle cell disease, examining how scientific hope, structural inequality, and lived experience converge in the pursuit of genetic cures. Drawing on ethnographic interviews, historical analysis, and stakeholder engagement, Sickle Cells to Super Cells explores how patients, families, clinicians, and researchers navigate both the promise and the consequences of biomedical innovation.

The book engages critical questions at the intersection of sociology, bioethics, and science and technology studies: What does it mean to be cured? Who defines cure, and who is excluded from it? How do racialized histories of pain, neglect, and resilience shape contemporary visions of genetic progress?

Blending narrative, theory, and critique, this work calls for a more accountable, patient-centered approach to translational medicine, one that attends not only to the allure of cure, but to what cure remakes, displaces, and leaves behind.

How do biomedical technologies remake and reshape bodies and selves in contexts where intervention is not simply about restoring health, but about transformation, optimization, or keeping pace with shifting norms? What happens when bodies are treated as modifiable projects that are subject to trends, market forces, and technological acceleration rather than stable sites of care?

In this strand, I examine how biomedical interventions reconfigure personhood, risk, and responsibility across domains including genetic medicine, aesthetic and cosmetic procedures, and enhancement oriented therapies. Drawing on sociology, bioethics, and science and technology studies, I analyze how individuals navigate uncertainty, regret, and social judgment when interventions outlast trends, produce unintended consequences, or generate cascading forms of further modification.

This work interrogates how contemporary biomedicine normalizes ongoing bodily remaking, often without corresponding ethical frameworks, long term care infrastructures, or institutional accountability for its social consequences.

What happens after biomedical innovation is declared a success? How do patients, clinicians, and institutions navigate life after trials end, approvals are granted, and public attention moves on? And what forms of care, responsibility, and accountability are required when transformed bodies must live within largely unchanged systems?

In this strand, I examine how emerging biomedical technologies are socially translated into everyday practice, focusing on survivorship, post-trial care, and the institutional infrastructures that shape long-term outcomes. Drawing on sociology, bioethics, and science and technology studies, I analyze how gaps between innovation and integration produce uncertainty, uneven care, and new forms of vulnerability, particularly for historically marginalized populations.

This work calls for a rethinking of translational medicine that extends beyond implementation and access to include sustained care, ethical responsibility, and system-level readiness for the lives biomedical innovation makes possible.

In addition to my substantive research, I develop and practice collaborative, community-engaged approaches to studying emerging biomedical technologies. My interdisciplinary work is grounded in long-term relationships with patients, clinicians, advocacy organizations, and policymakers, and centers stakeholder engagement as a core research method rather than a supplementary activity. I use qualitative methods, community advisory boards, and co-production frameworks to generate knowledge that reflects community priorities and strengthens institutional accountability.

Much of this work focuses on translating lived experience into interdisciplinary research, policy discussions, and educational materials. Across these projects, I work closely with clinicians, ethicists, and community partners to bridge gaps between biomedical innovation, ethical analysis, and everyday care.