Advisory Board
As part of Marymount Manhattan College’s CityEdge program, each academic department sponsors an Advisory Board composed of accomplished professionals with knowledge, experience, and expertise in fields related to our respective programs. Members of the Natural Sciences Advisory Board provide insight on careers in the sciences and identify job openings, internships, and other professional opportunities for our students.
Advisory Board Members
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Keaven Caro
Keaven Caro is an alumnus of the B.S. Behavioral Neuroscience and B.S. Biology programs with minors in Dance and Chemistry. He received two Gold Keys for academic excellence in both of his majors and was the President of the neuroscience and pre-medical clubs his senior year. He spent three undergraduate years working as a research assistant and then lab manager in Dr. Deirtra Hunter’s MMC Music, Mind, and Brain Lab, where they studied psychophysiological responses evoked by emotionally charged music in human participants. In his junior year, Keaven interned as a research assistant in the Morishita lab at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, where they studied the synaptic plasticity and postnatal development of a neural circuit critical for the visual spatial attention faculty. This internship led to a part-time job as a senior in college, then a full-time job for two years after graduation.
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Leslie McCauliff
Dr. McCauliff most recently worked at Iontox, LLC, a contract research service company specializing in ADME-PK and toxicology-based research, in Kalamazoo, MI. Dr. McCauliff led and supported projects dealing primarily with in vitro toxicology and safety screening of various chemicals, drugs and food additives for a number of commercial and academic clients. After relocating to the Atlanta, GA, area in 2017, Dr. McCauliff continued her relationship with Iontox as a science writer, aiding in the preparation of company press releases, client updates and website based client services.
Dr. McCauliff has served as a consultant to Dr. Judith Storch of the Nutritional Science Department at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ, since 2015. Her work focuses on intracellular cholesterol trafficking, specifically with respect to the mobilization of free cholesterol within the endo/lysosomal compartment by the Niemann Pick C2 protein. The collaboration with Dr. Storch has resulted in over half a dozen publications.
Dr. McCauliff currently resides in Decatur, GA, with her family.
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Ashley Pirovano
Ashley Pirovano graduated from Marymount Manhattan College in 2013 with a B.S. in Biology. While attending Marymount Manhattan, Ashley conducted research in environmental chemistry with Dr. Leri, which sparked her interest in the sciences and convinced her to pursue a career in scientific research. After graduating, Ashley attended graduate school at SUNY Environmental Science and Forestry, where she studied interactions between endophytic bacteria and plants and earned a Master’s degree. Ashley found her way back to MMC after graduate school, working for two years as the Laboratory Supervisor and Instructor of the General Chemistry Laboratory. Along her career path in science, she felt dissatisfied by the lack of diversity in academia, particularly in the sciences. For this reason, in 2018 Ashley joined the nonprofit organization BioBus, where she works to bridge the gap between academic research and the community of NYC. Her overall career goals are to make science fun and accessible to all and to help girls and minority students explore and pursue science.
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Raymond Romano
Raymond Romano is a doctoral student at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center. His focus is in health services research, and his specific interests are in the detection, diagnosis, and care of dementia in the primary care setting, particularly early biomarkers of disease. His interest in dementia began during his undergraduate career at MMC in the laboratory of Dr. Ann Aguanno, where he studied the role of the protein Cyclin-Dependent Kinase 5 in insulin-related neurodegenerative diseases. He explored the molecular pathway hyperinsulinemia has on the aberrant behavior of CDK5 contributing to the pathology of Alzheimer’s disease. After his undergraduate education, he received a Master in Public Health from Boston University and began working in clinical research at the Boston University Alzheimer’s Disease Center. He moved to Nashville to join the Vanderbilt Memory and Alzheimer’s Center. He completed the Vanderbilt University School of Nursing Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP) program as a pre-specialty student in 2015 and is currently working as an FNP in primary care practice with the Metro Nashville Public School system and at the Gaylord Opryland Clinic. Particular studies he has worked on have focused on vascular health and Alzheimer’s disease pathology, subjective memory complaints, and barriers of minority groups to participate in research.
