Dr. Krymskaya received her PhD from the Department of Biophysics at the Moscow State University after completing pre-doctoral training at the Institute of Biophysics of the Russian Academy of Sciences. She completed her post-doctoral training in signal transduction at the Cardiology Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and at the Department of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2001, Dr. Krymskaya joined faculty at the Pulmonary, Allergy, and Critical Care Division at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Krymskaya’s laboratory is investigating signaling mechanisms of smooth muscle cell proliferation and migration as it relates to the pathobiology of lymphangioleiomyomatosis (LAM), pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) and asthma. She has dedicated the last several years of her career to combating LAM. Krymskaya’s lab was responsible for the breakthrough step of discovering the function of the Tuberous Sclerosis Complex 2 (TSC2) gene. Dr. Krymskaya’s study linked mutational inactivation of TSC2 in human LAM cells to the constitutive activation of mTOR/S6K1 signaling pathway and abnormal LAM cell growth. Dr. Krymskaya has also dramatically advanced translational LAM research by demonstrating that rapamycin inhibits LAM cell growth. This discovery identified rapamycin as a promising therapeutic strategy for LAM patients, and paved the way for rapamycin clinical trails.