Alyssa Mitson-Salazar
Peer Mentor
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.