2021 Student Mentors

Paola Figueroa-Delgado (she/her/ella) grew up in a small rural town in Puerto Rico and graduated with a B.S. in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of Puerto Rico at Río Piedras. During her first years as an undergrad, she served as a research mentor to pre-college students at the Arecibo Observatory Space Academy conducting research in astronomy, physics, engineering, biology and chemistry. Half-way through her undergrad she conducted clinical research with a Neuropathologist at the University of Puerto Rico Medical School, which helped her define her interests toward conducting neuroscience research. During her last two years of undergrad, Paola was an NIH BP-ENDURE Fellow, which provided training in Neuroscience for individuals of underrepresented and low-income backgrounds. She worked in identifying molecular and cellular mechanisms that promote nervous system regeneration in the sea cucumber H. glaberrima and developed an in vitro culture system for radial nerve cord explants. In the Summer of her junior year, she participated in the Department of Molecular Biology and Lewis Sigler Institute Summer Undergraduate Research Program at Princeton University as an summer intern. Under the mentorship of Dr. Elizabeth Gavis, she worked on identifying the role of the canonical Wnt-pathway in regulating neuron morphology. Throughout her undergraduate degree, she led and participated on various initiatives to promote and increase diversity in STEM. Paola is now a PhD candidate at the Department of Cell Biology in the Yogev laboratory. She currently studies the underlying cell-biological mechanisms that regulate dendrite-specific pruning. In her free time, she enjoys game-nights and dinners with friends, going on a run, binge-watching series, taking a day or weekend trip to New York or Boston, and volunteering.

Hannah was born and raised in a suburb of Detroit, Michigan and will forever be a Midwesterner at heart. Always interested in psychology and science, Hannah discovered her love for neuroscience as an undergrad at Michigan State University. While there, she worked for several years in a lab studying a neuropeptide involved in feeding and motivation. She spent her summers pursuing various research opportunities, including a study abroad in Germany researching protein trafficking in a diabetes institute and an internship at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) studying neural regeneration after injury. After graduating, Hannah moved to Baltimore, Maryland where she worked as a postbac at the National Institute in Drug Abuse studying the neural circuits of associative learning and decision making. During these two formative years in Baltimore she volunteered at a free community health clinic and on a needle exchange van, both helping to confirm her undeniable need for a patient-facing career. Hannah is now a rising 4th year MD-PhD student in the Neuroscience Department in Jessica Cardin’s lab. Her research investigates cortex-wide neural plasticity during learning and decision making.  She is also active in the addiction medicine and psychiatry communities, works as a student provider at a primary care clinic, and holds various leadership positions. In her free time, Hannah enjoys traveling, hiking, baking, and spending quality time with her two cats.

Rebecca was born and raised in Puerto Rico. She pursued her undergraduate studies at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez, where she majored in Industrial Microbiology. In her home institution, she worked on screening for pathogenic aerosols in the biology department and identifying environmental fungal interactions with bromeliads. Her first summer internship experience was with BioMed SURF in 2018, where she worked in Dr. Barbara Kazmierczak’s lab. Here, she studied the identification of amoebicidal compounds produced by Pseudomonas aeruginosa with activity against Acanthamoeba castellanii. The end goal of this project is to find potential therapeutics for patients with Acanthamoeba infections through natural product drug discovery. Now, Rebecca has finished up her first year as a PhD student in the Microbiology Track of the BBS program. She recently joined Dr. Barbara Kazmierczak’s lab where she’ll be studying amoeba- Pseudomonas aeruginosa interactions, with the aim to understand how Pseudomonas mechanistically causes cell death. In her spare time, Rebecca enjoys making art & crafts, hanging out with friends and baking.

Daisy Duan (she/her/hers) was born and raised in Brooklyn, NYC, a daughter to two hard working Chinese immigrant parents. She grew up loving the arts, from drawing to painting to creative writing. It was not until attending high school and taking physical sciences classes Daisy was fascinated with how biology and physics concepts could be combined to help us understand biological phenomena. With the help from her scientific advisors and mentors at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Bronx Science, and American Museum of Natural History, Daisy was given the incredible opportunity to first conduct research by the end of 9th grade. Since then, she feels inclined to always pay it forward given the chance: giving feedback on scientific writing pieces and applications, and making aware STEM opportunities to students coming from similarly disadvantaged backgrounds. Upon graduating from Johns Hopkins with degrees in Biophysics and Applied Math & Stats, Daisy became the first in her family to not only finish high school but college. Now at Yale University, Daisy is a rising third year Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry Ph.D. student in Dr. Anthony Koleske's lab. Her thesis project focuses on elucidating the mechanism by which a tyrosine kinase impacts microtubule dynamics to regulate cellular morphogenesis and migration. Outside of the lab, Daisy loves to explore new cities, hike, and cook with friends in her spare time.

Justin was born in Atlanta, Georgia but moved to the rural town of Georgia for high school. He then attended Yale College and majored in Molecular Biochemistry and Biophysics. There, he had the opportunity to participate in the Yale STARS program which gave him his first opportunity to do research and study the effects of hypoglycemia on the brain. From his time in lab and extracurricular activities shadowing and volunteering in different clinical settings, he became interested in pursuing an MD/PhD program.  Justin is now a 6th year MD/PhD student in the Immunobiology department in Jordan Pober’s lab. Here, he studies how B cells transmigrate to sites of inflammation in solid organ transplants. When Justin is not in lab, you can find him binge-watching shows, doing pottery, or cooking

Alyssa Mitson-Salazar is an eighth-year MD/PhD student at Yale. Originally from the rural farm town of Manassa, Colorado, she attended Yale College as a QuestBridge Scholar and studied molecular, cellular, and developmental biology. Thanks to a program similar to BioMed Amgen she spent three years in a lab studying DNA damage repair. Outside of science she choreographed for her dance group and tutored biology. Upon graduating, Alyssa worked as an IRTA postbaccalaureate fellow at the National Institutes of Health for two years, where she studied human Th2 cells in allergic disease. She returned to Yale in 2014 to pursue an MD/PhD. In the laboratory of Dr. Ruslan Medzhitov, Alyssa studies the role of regulatory T cells in intestinal homeostasis and allergic inflammation. Outside of science, she enjoys dancing, eating tacos, gardening, hiking Connecticut state parks, and playing with her two cats.

Kevin was born in the Philippines and moved to Los Angeles, CA when he was 10 years old. Through various programs such as NIH-RISE and CIRM at California State University – Los Angeles, he studied Microbiology and Biochemistry for his B.S. and M.S. degrees, respectively, and researched topics such as the role host defense peptides play in preventing the formation of bacterial biofilms and the therapeutic potential of placental stem cells. At Yale, he joined a Cell Biology laboratory but recently switched laboratories during his 3rd year (2020-21) to study Legionella pneumophila pathogenesis in the laboratory of Dr. Craig Roy. Throughout the week, you can likely catch Kevin on a jog, playing tennis, or spending his grad school stipend at various restaurants around New Haven. But most especially, he will 100% be at the local karaoke bar on Friday nights.