PhD Student With CF Stephen Shannon To Contribute Weekly Column on Cystic Fibrosis News Today

Cystic Fibrosis News Today is pleased to announce that Stephen Shannon, a student researcher currently earning his Ph.D. and a person with Cystic Fibrosis, will join the website’s editorial staff and publish a weekly column on his personal journey in living with the disease, as well as fresh insights into the latest CF-related news. The column will give Stephen an opportunity to use Cystic Fibrosis News Today‘s ever-growing platform to advocate for more support, funding, and awareness about the disease — a personal mission that he takes seriously in his private and professional life.

Stephen brings a unique set of skills and life experiences to this new role as columnist for Cystic Fibrosis News Today. Having been born with the disease and diagnosed at a young age, Stephen has grown up with the same daily challenges that everyone in the CF community knows and understands. Living with CF led him to pursue science in his educational career, and after receiving his B.S at Wheaton College, he went on to work as a high school science teacher before entering his current Ph.D program. During his time as a science teacher, Stephen picked up critically important skills in being able to effectively communicate with other people about the struggles and challenges with a disease such as Cystic Fibrosis, as well as learning to present complex scientific facts and figures to an audience that often lacks the ability to grasp scientific and technical information.

Currently, Stephen is pursuing his Ph.D. in biomedical sciences at the Kansas University Medical Center in Kansas City, Kansas. As an undergraduate, he performed extensive research in a neuroendocrinology lab, studying the effects of brain injury on the development of post-traumatic stress disorder. Now, as he works toward becoming a full-fledged researcher, Stephen brings his experience of living with cystic fibrosis, his education in molecular biology, and his position as a high school biology teacher together in order to write and speak on the issues surrounding CF to both a scientific community and a broader community unfamiliar with the science underlying the disease and its therapies.

“My life goal is to work toward the development of therapies targeted to the mutation of Cystic Fibrosis,” Stephen notes. “My ambition is nothing less than to help develop a cure for the seventy-thousand individuals who are currently surviving the disease.”As Stephen traverses his personal and professional paths of fulfilling his dreams and doing everything he can to contribute to a CF cure, Cystic Fibrosis News Today is proud to help him in his mission however we can. We invite you to visit Cystic Fibrosis News Today every Thursday for his latest column, and sign up for our CF e-mail news digest for the latest news concerning Cystic Fibrosis: