Women Rocking Research
Join Versiti Blood Research Institute as we celebrate women in science.
| Date: | Wednesday, April 23, 2025, 4:30 - 6:00 p.m. |
| Location: | Versiti Blood Research Institute 8733 W Watertown Plank Road Wauwatosa, WI 53226 |
Join pioneering blood researchers Karin Hoffmeister, MD, and Agata Steenackers, PhD, for an exclusive, intergenerational experience celebrating the power of science and promise of discovery at the Versiti Blood Research Institute on Wednesday, April 23.
This unique, annual program is thoughtfully designed to engage and empower women and girls of all ages. Whether you’re eight or eighty, you’ll be inspired by what’s possible when passion meets purpose in the world of research.
Dr. Karin Hoffmeister is a pioneering leader in glycoscience, a field that unravels the structure and function of sugar molecules in health and disease. As the Hauske Family Endowed Chair in Glycobiology and Deputy Director & Senior Investigator at the Versiti Blood Research Institute (VBRI) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, she is driving the integration of glycoscience into mainstream research and clinical practice. Her work highlights its transformative potential in advancing therapies for blood, immune, and cancer-related disorders.
Dr. Hoffmeister is a professor of biochemistry and medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW) and Director of the Translational Metabolomics (TraM) Shared Resource at the MCW Cancer Center, where she accelerates progress in glycomics and metabolomics to enhance scientific impact locally and nationwide. As the Director of the Translational Glycomics Center, she is spearheading the development of a human glycome database to decode the role of sugar molecules on hematopoietic and circulating blood cells in both normal function and disease. Under her leadership, the center is pioneering novel approaches to ameliorating bone marrow failure syndromes, including immune thrombocytopenia, myelodysplastic syndromes, and hyperproliferative disorders such as myeloproliferative neoplasms.
A dedicated mentor, Dr. Hoffmeister has trained the next generation of glycoscience investigators and served as Program Director and Principal Investigator of the first NHLBI National Career Development Consortium for Excellence in Glycoscience at Versiti (2018–2024).
Through her groundbreaking research, leadership, and commitment to innovation, Dr. Hoffmeister is shaping the future of glycoscience, hematology, and translational medicine, ensuring its profound impact on therapeutic development and patient care.
Dr. Agata Steenackers, PhD, is a Senior Research Scientist and the Manager of the Hoffmeister Laboratory at the Versiti Blood Research Institute. She specializes in surface sugar modifications (glycosylation) and their impact on cellular functions. Dr. Steenackers trained at the Glycobiology Institute in Lille, France, where she investigated how changes in surface glycolipids influence breast cancer development. She further advanced her expertise at the National Institutes of Health, studying the structure and function of the glycosylation enzyme O-GlcNAc transferase and its role in metabolic disorders. Currently, she leads multiple research projects at the Hoffmeister Laboratory, focusing on how altered surface glycans contribute to blood cancer resistance, particularly in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL), against immune therapies. Her work also explores the role of glycosaminoglycans and their synthetic mimetics in blood platelet formation under both physiological conditions and in diseases such as myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs) and myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS).