Andrea Cuentas-Condori, PhD, a neuroscience postdoctoral fellow at Yale School of Medicine, has been selected as a Hanna H. Gray Fellow by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI).
Cuentas-Condori is among 25 early career scientists selected for the award. Together, they represent “a promising and more diverse future for biomedical science.” Fellows will receive funding for their postdoctoral training and may continue to receive funding during their early career years as independent faculty. In total, fellows may receive up to $1.4 million each and be supported for up to eight years. In keeping with HHMI’s ethos of supporting “people, not projects,” fellows will have the freedom to follow their curiosity and study the scientific questions that matter most—changing direction as needed—for the duration of the award.
Cuentas-Condori is a member of the Colón-Ramos Lab, led by Daniel Colón Ramos, PhD, Dorys McConnel Duberg Professor of Neuroscience and Cell Biology. The focus of her research is to understand how neurons can co-transmit more than one neurotransmitter and how that may regulate behavior in a living animal. “Dual-transmission completely changes how we look at the nervous system in its complexity and the possibility of communication among neurons,” Cuentas-Condori said.
Cuentas-Condori hails from Lima, Peru. “When I was growing up, I didn’t realize this could be a career path for me,” she said. She attributes much of her success to her mentors: Andrea Page-McCaw at Vanderbilt University, PhD advisor David Miller, and postdoc mentor Daniel Colón-Ramos. “Saying it’s a dream come true wouldn’t be an exaggeration,” she said.