Ms. Stephanie Chidester is a PhD candidate at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, College of Nursing, and a Graduate Partnerships Program (GPP) fellow at the National Institute of Nursing Research. She holds bachelor degrees in biology and nursing from the University of Utah. She has 10 years experience in medical/surgical nursing. As a graduate research assistant at University of Missouri-St. Louis, she contributed to clinical studies related to premature infant nutrition. As a GPP fellow with Dr. Paule Joseph's SenSMet unit, Stephanie is conducting dissertation research related to the use of extracellular vesicles in diagnostic and prognostic applications related to metabolic disease.