Mimi was a graduate student in the Neuroscience Graduate Group from 2007-2013. She is a graduate of Davidson College, where she majored in Biology with a concentration in Neuroscience. In 2010, Mimi was awarded a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). Mimi defended her Ph.D. thesis: 'Developing the yeast disaggregase Hsp104 as a treatment for polyglutamine disease in Drosophila' in July, 2013. Mimi went on to pursue her post-doctoral studies with Bill DeGrado at UCSF.

Publications

Seither, K.M., H.A. McMahon, N. Singh, H. Wang, M. Cushman-Nick, G.L. Montalvo, W.F. DeGrado, and J. Shorter. (2014). Specific aromatic foldamers potently inhibit spontaneous and seeded Aβ42 and Aβ43 fibril assembly. Biochem. J. 464:85-98. pdf file link

Cushman-Nick, M., N.M. Bonini, and J. Shorter. (2013). Hsp104 suppresses polyglutamine-induced degeneration post onset in a Drosophila MJD/SCA3 model. PLoS Genetics. 9(9): e1003781. pdf file link

DeSantis, M.E., E.H. Leung, E.A. Sweeny, M.E. Jackrel, M. Cushman-Nick, A. Neuhaus-Follini, S. Vashist, M.A. Sochor, M.N. Knight, and J. Shorter. (2012). Operational Plasticity Enables Hsp104 to Disaggregate Diverse Amyloid and Non-Amyloid Clients. Cell. 151:778-793. pdf file link

Cushman, M.*, B.S. Johnson*, O.D. King, A.D. Gitler and J. Shorter. (2010). Prion-like disorders: blurring the divide between transmissibility and infectivity. J. Cell Sci.123:1191-1201. pdf file link (*These authors contributed equally to this work)

Tsika, E., M. Moysidou, J. Guo, M. Cushman, P. Gannon, R. Sandaltzopoulos, B.I. Giasson, D. Krainc, H. Ischiropoulos and J.R. Mazzulli. (2010). Distinct region-specific alpha-synuclein oligomers in A53T transgenic mice: implications for neurodegeneration. J. Neurosci. 30:3409 –3418. pdf file link

Vashist, S., M. Cushman and J. Shorter. (2010). Applying Hsp104 to protein-misfolding disorders. Biochem. Cell Biol. 88:1-13. pdf file link