Assistant Professor, Physiological Sciences

B.S., University of Wisconsin – La Crosse

Ph.D., University of Iowa

In conjunction with Margaret and Will Hearst

Chronic pain affects millions of people in the United States, and its socioeconomic burden is currently unprecedentedly high due to the opioid crisis. Almost everyone has either experienced chronic pain or had a family member affected by it. For these reasons, the Mickle lab is passionate about pain research and discovering new therapeutic options for chronic pain patients. Our lab uses a “cell to model organism” strategy to pursue the goal of understanding and delineating the causes of bladder pain dysfunction. We have multiple avenues of research that support this end goal: 1) Pursuing the development of neuromodulation strategies to alleviate bladder dysfunction following spinal cord injury, 2) Evaluating the role of urothelial cells, the cells that line the bladder, in bladder pain and dysfunction, and 3) Developing implantable biosensor and neuromodulatory technology to study bladder disorders and pain.