Webinar: Is a Postbac Right for You?

Speakers

Yaihara Fortis Santiago, PhD (organizer and moderator)

The New York Academy of Sciences

Arnaldo Díaz Vázquez, PhD

Assistant Dean for Research Training Programs and Director of Recruitment and Retention of Diversity Scholars
University of Pennsylvania

Arnaldo Diaz, PhD, is the Assistant Dean for Research Training Programs, Director of the Recruitment and Retention of Diversity Scholars and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Pharmacology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn). Dr. Diaz works collaboratively with University leadership to develop and coordinate targeted recruitment strategies and provide academic and professional career development for underrepresented minority (URM) trainees across the full spectrum of undergraduate, graduate and post-graduate programs in the biomedical sciences. He directs the Summer Undergraduate Internship Program (SUIP), the Post-Baccalaureate Research Education Program (PennPREP), and co-directs the PENN–Postdoctoral Opportunities in Research and Teaching (PENN-PORT) program. He works closely with Program members by advising them, monitoring their progress, and assisting them with the graduate school admission process and fellowships. Additionally, Dr. Diaz serves as liaison to The Leadership Alliance, an academic consortium working to develop underrepresented students into leaders. Dr. Diaz received a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry from the University of Puerto Rico–Rio Piedras, a PhD in Biochemistry from Texas A&M University, and completed postdoctoral training in Cancer Pharmacology at Penn.

Elena Hernández-Ramón, PhD

Scientific Program Manager, Office of Intramural Training and Education
National Institutes of Health

Dr. Elena E. Hernández-Ramón investigated the effects of epilepsy in pregnancy during her MD thesis and after that, she investigated the integration sites of human papillomavirus (HPV) into the human genome in her Masters in Genetics and Molecular Biology. She continued working on HPV during her graduate studies in the University of York, UK, investigating the structure and function of the HPVE2 transcription factor, and discovered that the dimerization of the HPV 16 E2 N terminal domain results in DNA looping within the upstream regulatory region. Dr. Hernández-Ramón worked as a Research Associate in the Hospital General de México for two years and then started a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) where she worked on the carcinogenic effects of tamoxifen. Her results showed that tamoxifen binds to the DNA forming adducts and suggested DNA damage as a possible mechanism responsible for endometrial cancer. Education and mentoring have been an important part of Dr. Hernández-Ramón's career. She was an Adjunct Professor at the Northern Virginia Community College from 2011–2014, and is currently a Scientific Program Manager at the Office of Intramural Training and Education at National Institutes of Health, where she is a pre-medical advisor and interacts mainly with post-bac students. She was the recipient of the 2016 Association for Women in Science (AWIS) Bethesda Mentoring Award.

Luz M. Cumba García

Graduate Student
Mayo Clinic

Luz Milbeth Cumba Garcia is a first year Immunology PhD student at Mayo Graduate School. She has been working at Mayo Clinic for 2 years now, since she joined the Postbaccalaureate Research Education Program (PREP) in 2014. During her first year at Mayo, Luz worked with Dr. Marina Ramirez Alvarado on the structure of amyloid proteins from amyloidosis patient samples. Then, she transitioned to the lab of Dr. Aaron Johnson where she worked on the pathologic contribution of T cells during acute neuroinflammation, which resulted in one publication.

Originally from Puerto Rico, in 2012 Luz graduated from the Universidad Metropolitana with a bachelors in Cellular and Molecular Biology, where she studied sexual reproduction of the plant Chamaecrista, as well as HIV epidemiology which resulted in 2 publications.

Luz has conducted research in different countries including a summer research program at the Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, a summer program in Germany, with the Nobel Laureate Harald zur Hausen and research program at the Institute of Parasitology and Biomedicine Lopez Neyra in Granada, Spain. In 2013, Luz obtained her master's degree from the same institution in Spain, where she studied the role of CD38 in a lupus mouse model.

In 2014 she taught basic science skills to college science students in China before being recruited to Mayo Clinic's PREP/Postbac program. She enjoys traveling, shopping, exercising and volunteering at the Pediatric Unit in Mayo Clinic Saint Mary's Hospital.