Before choosing where he would attend graduate school, Kaelan Brannan came to the Stowers Institute as part of the Summer Scholar program. Working in the labs that summer, he became captivated by the exciting genomic, computational, and imaging approaches used in the lab to study transcriptional regulation during development in Drosophila.

“My summer at Stowers gave me a taste for the kind of environment I wanted to work in as a scientist,” Brennan said. “So when choosing a Ph.D. program, it just made sense to return to Kansas City to study at the Stowers Graduate School.”

Brennan is now a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University, building on the scientific foundation he developed during his doctoral training at Stowers in the lab of Investigator Julia Zeitlinger, Ph.D. Reflecting on his time in the graduate program, Brennan emphasizes the freedom to pursue bold ideas, ask ambitious questions, and follow curiosity wherever it leads—  always balanced by a commitment to rigorous, high-quality science.