Annually, the Pew Latin American Fellows Program in Biomedical Sciences provides support to ten post-doctoral Latin American scientists from countries like Chile, Mexico, Argentina, Uruguay, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Colombia, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Peru, Venezuela, and Brazil to receive postdoctoral training in the United States. Maritere Uriostegui, a postdoc student working in the Fiszben lab, has received funding for two years to fund her research on understanding gene regulation via transcription and RNA processing, with a focus on how promoter sequences drive RNA processing decisions. When Uriostegui returns to Latin America, she will receive additional funding to establish her independent laboratory.
When asked about her reaction after winning this award, Uriostegui responded,
“I am so thrilled to be apart of such an amazing community, with advisors that I deeply admire! I just couldn’t believe it. I got in touch with my family to let them know that I had won one of the fellowships of this year. I am really close to my parents, they know everything about my life. They were so thrilled for me.”
In addition, Uriostegui describes one of the major challenges that she faces in her laboratory is the use of sophisticated techniques in cell biology, molecular biology, and biochemistry. The combination of wet lab and computational biology techniques is a relatively new field. In the Fiszbein Lab, her goal is to understand how gene architecture orchestrates the dynamic regulation of gene expression in normal cells and disease.
In the future, she remarks that:
“It will be amazing if we build new computational tools to predict gene regulatory programs from genome sequences and gene architecture, as well as design new strategies to manipulate gene expression with therapeutic purposes.”
Uriostegui is grateful to Dr. Ana Fiszbein, the Fiszbein laboratory, and her previous mentors for their advice and support on this competitive application.
Congratulations, Maritere Uriostegui!
