Candice (Candie) Paulsen studied Genetic Biology at Purdue University in West Lafayette, IN, USA where she first became interested in chemical biology and cysteine chemistry. She then pursued a PhD in Chemical Biology at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI, USA where she worked with Dr. Kate Carroll to study the roles of hydrogen peroxide as a second messenger and protein cysteine sulfenylation as a reversible post-translational modification in controlling eukaryotic signal transduction cascades. In her fourth year, Candie relocated with the Carroll lab to the Scripps Research Institute in Jupiter, FL, USA, which is where she had the two most productive and enjoyable years of her graduate career. After her PhD, she chose to switch fields and experimental approaches to study fundamental research questions central to the human experience – pain perception and sensory biology. As a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. David Julius at UCSF in San Francisco, CA, USA, she harnessed her expertise in redox biology and cysteine chemistry to understand how TRPA1 is activated by reactive chemicals – which included solving the first high-resolution structures of this critical pain receptor by Cryo-EM. She became an Assistant Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale University in New Haven, CT, USA in January 2018. Her independent lab applies a suite of complementary biochemical, biophysical, and structural biology approaches to study the molecular mechanisms of sensory TRP channel regulation and dysregulation with an eye towards uncovering novel avenues for pain therapeutic development.