So which caused you to switch gears?

That's a great question.

I believe it was serendipity, I think, where I was not thinking about aneurysmal disease in particular or sex-based differences.

I had done some retrospective reviews on sex-based differences and looking at it from a lens of health services research where being female is a risk factor for poor outcomes within vascular, and we've seen that in various studies.

But I was approached... for being the US PI of this larger international effort by Janet Powell, who was a huge name in aortic research.

So she approached me about three years ago at the sponsorship of Dr. Ron Dahlman, our prior division chief, as he is big into aortic research and he has his own limit trial ongoing testing metformin versus placebo for small AAAs.

So Janet wanted... us to be part of this larger international effort and us would obviously be like the biggest contributor of patients and ron introduced us and i spoke to her about the trial i spoke to her about my experience with pause and other sub-investigator co-investigator studies she was very interested in me taking the leadership role along with adam beck at the university of alabama and we started working on it three years ago got through what's called GCRFF, which is a global cardiovascular research funders forum.

So what are your thoughts on screening guidelines for women?