Who is Kathy O'Hagan? - Postdoctoral

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Who is Kathleen O’Hagan?
A Teacher and a Researcher

Kathy was born in Teaneck, NJ and spent her childhood in Midland Park, NJ, a small suburban village in Northern NJ. She didn’t have a particular fascination with science as a child. Most of the “science” she had in elementary school involved the physical sciences, which did not interest her much.

Listen to Your Mother
In addition to reading voraciously and playing sports, Kathy did enjoy learning about the natural world, an interest that was nurtured by many family camping trips and visits to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Two factors in high school pushed her in the direction of a career in science, and particularly the life sciences. The first occurred early in her high school career, as she mused over potential college majors, such as English and psychology. Her mother interjected rather abruptly “You should go into technology. It’s the wave of the future for smart girls”. This statement, uttered in the mid-1970s by a stay-at-home mom, had quite an impact and it opened her mind to science as a potential career path for a woman. Second, she found her high school biology classes far more interesting than chemistry or physics, so biology it was when she entered college.

Teachers Make a Difference
Kathy chose to attend the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA, which is a small liberal arts college. In her second year there, Kathy took a one-semester class in Animal Physiology as a sophomore, and she knew she had found her niche. In physiology, she saw a path for combining her interests in exercise and in understanding how organ systems function in health and disease.

Being at a small college gave Kathy the opportunity to have close contact with the science faculty, which was important in that it helped foster her burgeoning interest in research. One of those faculty members, Wayne Carley, was gracious and allowed her, as a senior, to design and complete a small exercise training study using rats, even though his own research interests were in reproductive physiology. She graduated with a bachelors degree in biology in 1983.

Training to Be a Researcher
For her graduate work, Kathy returned to her home state to work on her Ph.D. in physiology at Rutgers, The State University of NJ (and yes, that is the official name of the university) in New Brunswick. Under the direction of Edward Zambraski, she learned that exercise is an excellent tool with which to probe the physiological mechanisms regulating cardiovascular function and renal hemodynamics. The cross-training in renal and exercise physiology she received, which on the surface may seem incongruous, has served her well in both research and in teaching. It was at Rutgers that she had her first taste of teaching in both lab and lecture formats. She found she enjoyed it very much.

In 1990, Dr. O’Hagan moved to Milwaukee, WI where she completed 3 years of postdoctoral work in the Department of Anesthesiology at the VA Medical Center/Medical College of Wisconsin under the direction of Philip Clifford and Leonard Bell. The training she received in neural control of the circulation during exercise led her to her current interest in understanding how pregnancy impacts vascular control mechanisms during exercise. While she greatly enjoyed her postdoctoral experience in which she spent 100% of her time in research, Dr. O’Hagan believed that a better fit for her for a permanent position was a combination of teaching and research.

Teaching is as Important as Research
Dr. O’Hagan’s current position is Professor of Physiology at the Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine, Midwestern University, Downers Grove, IL. MWU is a teaching-intensive institution that specializes in the education of health professionals. She feels that her previous teaching experience as a graduate student and her broad training in systems-level renal, neural control, and exercise physiology were major advantages in competing for this tenure-track position at MWU. A good portion of Dr. O’Hagan’s time is dedicated to instruction, and consequently, her salary money is provided by the institution. This differs from faculty positions in many medical schools where faculty members are expected to devote most of their time to research and generate most of their salary (if not all) from extramural grant funds. As a member of the physiology faculty at MWU, Dr. O’Hagan helps to provide instruction to professional students in the colleges of pharmacy and health sciences as well as to the osteopathic medical students. Her primary teaching responsibilities include lecturing in renal and exercise physiology and facilitating small-group discussions in all areas of physiology.

MWU also values original scholarship and service to the community. So Dr. O’Hagan has a small research lab where she is currently focusing on trying to understand the impact of pregnancy on the regulation of uterine artery blood flow during dynamic exercise. She is interested in how the sympathetic nervous system, the vascular endothelium and circulating humoral factors interact to control uterine blood flow during exercise, and how normal pregnancy affects this response.

Family and Fun
Dr. O’Hagan’s family includes her husband Kyle Ramsey (an immunologist also on faculty at MWU), their son Matthew, and Kyle’s older children Hannah and Seth. They enjoy playing a variety of recreational sports and spending time outside. They often visit the various Chicago museums and enjoy traveling to their extended family, which live across the eastern US. Dr. O’Hagan is also involved at her parish in the lay ministries of reader and adult education.

Advice for a Postdoctoral Fellow
My advice is to spend time in serious thought on where you want to be professionally and personally 5 years from now. Reflection should lead to action to acquire the needed techniques, publications, teaching and grant-writing experience that will make you a competitive candidate in whatever career path you choose.

Recent Publications
1. O'Hagan, K.P., and J.A. Alberts. Uterine artery blood flow and renal sympathetic nerve activity during exercise in rabbit pregnancy. Am. J. Physiol. Regul. Integr. Comp. Physiol. 285: R1135-R1144, 2003.

2. Brooks, V.L., K.A. Clow, and K.P. O'Hagan. Pregnancy and acute baroreflex resetting in conscious rabbits. Am. J. Physiol. Regul. Integr. Comp. Physiol. 283: R429-R440, 2002.

3. O'Hagan, K.P., K.A. Skogg, and J.B. Stevenson. AT₁ receptor block does not affect arterial baroreflex during pregnancy in rabbits. Am. J. Physiol. Heart Circ. Physiol. 280: H1996-H2005, 2001.

4. Mueller, P.J., K.P. O'Hagan, K.A. Skogg, J.B. Buckwalter, and P.S. Clifford. Renal hemodynamic responses to dynamic exercise in rabbits. J. Appl. Physiol. 85: 1605-1614, 1998.

5. O'Hagan, K.P., and S.M. Casey. Arterial baroreflex during pregnancy and renal sympathetic nerve activity during parturition in rabbits. Am. J. Physiol. Heart Circ. Physiol. 274: H1635-H1642, 1998.