Increasing Access: Giovanna Guerrero-Medina, PhD yale.edu - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from yale.edu Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
May 10, 2021
Photo by Nelson Perez Catalan
Nelson Perez Catalan discovered he was interested in pursuing science while working at a student job at the University of Oregon cleaning glass in the labs. He found himself drawn to research around the brain, and thought about pursuing an MD/PhD, but there was no medical school at his university and as a transplant from Chile, he says much of the U.S. college process was mystifying to him. He knew he wanted to continue the research he’d begun on a type of glial cell in the brain called astrocytes. He attended the University of Chicago for his post-baccalaureate and continued his work examining how astrocytes coordinate neuron assembly, moving from fruit flies to mouse models. But he wasn’t sure about next steps.