I am a Mexican-American, female, first-generation college student from Nebraska. I aim to use my background and lived experiences of navigating higher education as a resource to support and advocate for others who are members of underrepresented, historically marginalized, and oppressed groups of people as they pursue their own careers in the biological sciences.
From Corn Fields to Tide Pools
My path into research, graduate school, and marine science has been a winding trail. When I am not working I enjoy gardening, cooking, hiking, and finding new coffee spots.
2013 - 2014
2014 - 2018
2018 - 2023
2023 - Present
I received my B.S. from the University of Nebraska at Omaha where I first started conducting research. My undergraduate research focused on agricultural runoff effects on the endocrinology of the fathead minnow in the Kolok lab. I also worked as a research assistant in a kidney transplant lab at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, an intern at the Henry Doorly Zoo Aquarium, and helped catalog plants fossils for a paleobotany lab.
After graduation, I worked as a technician in Dr. Dan Bolnick's lab at UT Austin. Here I helped study the evolutionary ecology of threespine stickleback in freshwater lakes across Vancouver Island, British Columbia.
After gaining valuable experience in Austin, I started graduate school at California State University Long Beach in the Johnson Lab pursuing my M.S. Check out my research and publications from this time here.
I completed my Ph.D. in Dr. Cascade Sorte's Global Change Ecology Lab at the University of California, Irvine where I investigated the impact of climate change on the physiology and ecology of marine intertidal species. Check out my research here.
Currently, I am a UC President's Postdoctoral Fellow in Dr. Kristy Kroeker's Global Change Ecology and Coastal Sustainability Lab at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Stay tuned for new research projects!
