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BioDr. Alexandra Polasko is a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University School of Medicine in the Department of Urology in Dr. James Brooks's lab. She received her M.S. and Ph.D. from UCLA in Civil and Environmental Engineering in Dr. Shaily Mahendra's lab and bachelors from UC Berkeley. Before coming to Stanford, she was a postdoctoral fellow at UCLA in the School of Dentistry, Oral Biology Division under Dr. Hung Ton-That where she studied the role motility plays as a virulence factor in oral pathogens. Currently, Dr. Polasko's research focuses on elucidating the mechanisms that drive benign prostate hyperplasia, which is the abnormal growth of the prostate and affects nearly 80% of men over eighty and can result in impaired urine storage and voiding as well as renal failure. She is a co-inventor on two patents and received UCLA's prestigious Distinguished Teaching Award for Teaching Assistants (2021).