Lester Rodriguez Santos

Lester obtained a B.S. in cellular and molecular biology from the University of Puerto Rico's Rio Piedras Campus in San Juan, Puerto Rico. As an undergraduate, he worked with pre-clinical rodent models to understand to role of endocannabinoids in regulating anxiety-like behaviors. After graduating, he became a postbaccalaureate fellow with Dr. Elliot Stein at the Neuroimaging Research Branch of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. His work focused on understanding how functional connectivity is altered during acute nicotine abstinence in tobacco smokers.

Additionally, he is deeply interested in scientific outreach and is currently involved with many different community-oriented initiatives at Yale University. He is a board member of the Yale OpenLabs organization and an outreach fellow for the Wu Tsai Institute's Student & Postdoc Committee. He also works as a GPE Fellow with Yale Pathways To Science in Yale's Office of New Haven Affairs.