Rachel Shahan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Prior to joining the faculty at UCLA in March 2024, she was a National Institutes of Health Postdoctoral Fellow at Duke University in the lab of the late Philip Benfey. Rachel received her PhD from the University of Maryland where she conducted her thesis research in the lab of Zhongchi Liu as a United States Department of Agriculture Pre-doctoral fellow. Rachel received her Bachelor of Science degree in Biology from Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia.