About MinorityPostdoc.org

minoritypostdoc.org is the website of the SACNAS Postdoc Committee. Our inaugural event was the Minority Postdoc Summit that occurred on Thursday October 21 at the 2004 SACNAS annual conference in Austin, Texas. We hold monthly conference calls to plan our activities and support each other through peer-to-peer mentoring. SACNAS members interested in postdoctoral issues are encouraged to join us. Please note that this website currently does not accept advertisements for job openings. Instead we direct you to the SACNAS web advertising page.

Summit overview

Postdoctoral research is a critical step in a scientific career. However this stage is often poorly defined resulting in a vulnerable part of a scientist’s career development. Can current diversity postdoctoral fellowships serve as a model for enhancing the training for all postdocs? The Summit at the 2004 SACNAS annual conference provided a forum for postdocs, funding organizations, professional societies, academic institutions, corporations, and other stakeholders to discuss issues, solutions, and outcomes concerning the postdoctoral experience. The long-term goal is to improve the recruitment, mentoring, and success of minority postdocs thereby facilitating the diversification of the scientific workforce. The short-term objective of the Summit was to network and brainstorm among participants to create annual career development opportunities for minority postdocs. The summary of the Diversity breakout session at the 2004 COSEPUP convocation served as talking points for the Minority Postdoc Summit. Read about the event.

Contact

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Meet the Current Committee

(incomplete list)

Alberto Roca

Alberto I. Roca, Ph.D. Founder & Editor, www.MinorityPostdoc.org
Dr. Roca was a Project Scientist working with Alex McPherson in the Biochemistry Department at UC-Irvine. Dr. Roca is a former University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellow. His research involves using biophysical approaches to understand the molecular mechanism of recombinational DNA repair. Dr. Roca is a first-generation Peruvian-American born in Houston, Texas. He received his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is principal investigator of an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation grant that allowed him to organize the Minority Postdoc Summit and create www.minoritypostdoc.org. He is a founding co-chair of the SACNAS Postdoc Committee and was also a member of the Diversity Committee of the National Postdoctoral Association.

Ivonne Vidal Pizarro, Ph.D. Co-chair, SACNAS Postdoc Committee
Dr. Vidal Pizarro earned her A.A. (English) from Miami Dade Community College. She then transferred to Florida International University, where she received a B.A. (English) and a B.S. (Biology). She continued her scientific interests in graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania and earned her Ph.D. (Neuroscience). She secured a predoctoral grant to support her thesis on spinal cord regeneration from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. She went on to be a postdoctoral researcher at Penn, studying multiple sclerosis and neuroimmunology. Ivonne is passionately committed to minorities in science and looks forward to making this her full-time career. She has worked with several organizations (Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science, The Leadership Alliance, Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students, and the National Postdoctoral Association among others). Dr. Vidal Pizarro is an American born, first generation Colombian-American and the first in her family to complete not only college, but also graduate school.

Roberto M. Aguilar, Ph.D. Member, SACNAS Postdoc Committee
Dr. Aguilar is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Irvine in the Reeve-Irvine Research Center working under the guidance of Dr. Oswald Steward in the area of Neural Regeneration. His research will attempt to identify novel ligands to utilize for axonal regeneration as well as identifying their molecular mechanisms. By identifying new ligands, he plans to provide new therapeutic avenues for people living with spinal cord injuries. Dr. Aguilar is a first-generation Mexican-American whose roots go back to Jalpa, Zacatecas, Mexico. He was the first in his family to go to college. Dr. Aguilar obtained his doctoral degree in 2006 from the University of Texas at San Antonio in Biology with an emphasis in neuroscience under the guidance of Dr. Luis S. Haro. Dr. Aguilar’s siblings, six brothers and four sisters, have all succeeded academically due to the importance of education implanted in them by their parents. Dr. Aguilar has been a member of SACNAS since 1996. He has served on SACNAS’s Board of Directors as a Graduate Student Representative. Dr. Aguilar served as a catalyst to initiate the SACNAS Chapter Organizations nation-wide. He is also serving on SACNAS’s Membership Committee.

Meda Higa, Ph.D. Member, SACNAS Postdoc Committee
Dr. Higa is an NIH IRACDA Postdoctoral Fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Robert W. Doms in the Department of Microbiology at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research is focused on Hantaviruses (specifically Puumala and Sin Nombre viruses), and understanding how their entry is facilitated by virally encoded glycoproteins. Through the IRACDA teaching training program, Dr. Higa also teaches at Rutgers-Camden, The State University of New Jersey. The first in her family to earn a doctoral degree, Dr. Higa completed her thesis at the University of Utah in Oncological Sciences where she studied the roles of nuclear pore proteins in nuclear export and nuclear envelope breakdown. She earned her B.A. from the University of California, Santa Cruz where she was also a Regents Scholar. Dr. Higa was born and raised in Seattle, Washington and is proud to have a rich and diverse ethnic background. In addition to her involvement with SACNAS, Dr. Higa also serves as the Diversity Chair of the Biomedical Postdoctoral Council at Penn and is a product of The Leadership Alliance.

Michelle Juarez, Ph.D. Member, SACNAS Postdoc Committee
Dr. Juarez is currently an NIH IRACDA Postdoctoral Fellow working for Dr. William McGinnis in the Department of Cell & Developmental Biology at the University of California, San Diego. IRACDA is a teaching training grant run jointly with San Diego State University. Her current research uses developmental genetics to study the epithelial wound response in Drosophila melanogaster. Dr. Juarez is a fourth generation Mexican-American from Los Angeles, CA and the first in her family to earn a doctoral degree. She received a Ph.D. in Genetics from SUNY-Stoney Brook in Dec 2004, conducting her experimental work at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Since graduate school Dr. Juarez has been actively involved in outreach college programs. She has been a SACNAS member since 2002. Dr. Juarez was responsible for the successful postdoc exhibition booth and Jorge Cham book signing at the 2005 SACNAS annual conference.

David Vigerust, Ph.D. Member, SACNAS Postdoc Committee
Dr. Vigerust is a Postdoctoral fellow in the Program for Vaccine Sciences Administration at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He was formerly a postdoc in Infectious Disease at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis Tennessee. His research involves elucidating the mechanisms of viral-bacterial synergism and the innate immune response to Influenza. Dr. Vigerust was born and raised in El Paso, Texas and is a first generation Mexican-American. He received an M.Sc. in Microbiology and Immunology from Texas Tech University and his Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University. During his graduate years, Dr. Vigerust was an Elizabeth Glazer Pediatric AIDS Student Award recipient, FASEB minority peer mentor, adjunct faculty in microbiology at a local community college; and, his work was recognized by AAI and ASCB. He is a member of the St. Jude postdoctoral executive committee and the National Postdoctoral Association. Dr. Vigerust was responsible for the well-received postdoc reception at the 2005 SACNAS annual conference.

Greg Villareal, Ph.D. Member, SACNAS Postdoc Committee
Dr. Greg Villareal received his Bachelor of Science degree as a MARC scholar from the University of Texas at San Antonio in 1998. In 2006, he earned his doctoral degree in the department of neurobiology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) where he utilized electrophysiology and imaging techniques to understand fundamental elements underlying learning and memory. While at UCLA, Dr. Villareal played a seminal role in establishing a SACNAS chapter and volunteered for many years at a highly regarded local public radio station. In 2007, Dr. Villareal continued his career in neuroscience by joining Galenea Corporation, a biotechnology company located in Cambridge, Massachusetts where he now focuses on developing novel techniques and therapeutics to treat patients suffering with schizophrenia. Outside of the laboratory, Dr. Villareal continues his involvement with SACNAS by serving on the Chapter, Membership, and Postdoc Committees. Importantly, he helped rejuvenate the Industry Advisory Committee whose long-term goal is to increase the participation and visibility of the private sector within SACNAS and to create more job opportunities for SACNAS members. In January 2008, Dr. Villareal was elected the youngest professional Board member in the thirty-five year history of SACNAS. He is a second-generation Tejano from San Antonio, Texas and still an avid Spurs fan.

Past Committee Members

Nancy Aguilar-Roca, Ph.D.
Dr. Aguilar-Roca was an NIH Biomedical Informatics Trainee at the University of California, Irvine. She worked with Dr. Al Bennett and Dr. Tony Long on the evolutionary genomics of experimentally derived strains of E. coli. Dr. Aguilar-Roca is a second generation Mexican-American from Los Angeles. She is currently a Lecturer/Project Specialist at the HHMI-UCI Professor Program. She received her Ph.D. in marine biology from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC-San Diego where she studied the physiology of air breathing fishes. Her B.A. is in biology from Occidental College in Los Angeles, CA. Throughout her graduate work, she was very active in K-12 education and outreach through the Birch Aquarium at Scripps. She was a mentor for the Minority Science Program in biological sciences at UC-Irvine. Dr. Aguilar-Roca has been a SACNAS member since 1994 and a crucial volunteer for all SACNAS postdoc events since 2003.

Lola Aleru
Ms. Aleru was the SACNAS Membership Manager and former staff liaison for the Postdoc Committee from 2004-2005. She had been with the Society for six years. Ms. Aleru was born in Fresno, California and is a first generation African-American whose parents are from Nigeria. Her B.A. is in business management and economics from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her future goal is to be an executive director of non-profit organization. Toward that end, she is interested in pursuing an MBA in non-profit administration.

Alessandra L. Barrera, Ph.D.
Dr. Barrera was a FIRST Postdoctoral Fellow (Fellowships in Research and Science Teaching) at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Her research was the structural determination of a bacterial protein-RNA complex that is fundamental in metabolism. In 2005 Dr. Barrera taught a course at Spelman and Morehouse Colleges. Dr. Barrera is a second-generation Spanish/Mexican-American born in Laredo, Texas. She earned her B.S. in Biochemistry from St. Edward’s University in her hometown of Austin, Texas and her Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the University of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois. Currently, Dr. Barrera is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology at Georgia Gwinnett College. She is a member of many organizations, such as SACNAS and the American Society of Microbiologists.

Joan Esnayra, Ph.D.
Dr. Esnayra received her B.A. in philosophy from the University of Washington in Seattle and her Ph.D. in biology (genetics) from the University of California, San Diego. Dr. Esnayra is a Yaqui Indian who lives openly with severe mental illness. She was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest. Dr. Esnayra is vice president of the Washington, D.C., American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES) professional chapter and chariman of the board for the Psychiatric Service Dog Society, a nonprofit organization devote to psychiatric service dog education, advocacy, research, and training facilitation. During her tenure as a former SACNAS Board member, Dr. Esnayra proposed the idea of SACNAS Special Interest Groups. This idea was the motiviation for the creation of the Postdoc virtual community where Dr. Esnayra served as the first moderator.

Arti Patel

Arti C. Patel, Ph.D., M.P.H.
Dr. Arti Patel is currently Director of Global Health Development at CTIS, Inc. Previously she was a postdoctoral fellow in the Cancer Prevention Fellowship Program in the Division of Cancer Prevention at the National Cancer Institute. She received her undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Patel was born in Columbus, Ohio and spent the remainder of her formative years in North Carolina, where her parents, originally from India, now reside. Dr. Patel’s research focuses on the development and implementation of interventions that combine immune-stimulating diets, chemopreventive agents and cancer vaccines to enhance the host’s immune response to cancer. Additionally, Dr. Patel has been an advocate for improving postdoctoral training by, for instance, chairing the Young Investigator’s Association at the National Cancer Institute. Dr. Patel was a member of the Steering Committee that conceived and wrote the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation proposal that created the National Postdoctoral Association. She is a former NPA Excecutive Board and was also a member of the Diversity Committee. Dr. Patel was a co-moderator of the Minority Postdoc Summit (2004).

Edward Ramos, Ph.D.
Dr. Ramos earned his Ph.D. in Genetics at the Pennsylvania State University. He was a NRSA Fellow at Johns Hopkins University where he worked in the lab of Dr. Victor Corces studying the role of insulator proteins in higher-order chromatin organization. Specifically, Dr. Ramos studied the role of Suppressor of Hairy wing [Su(Hw)] at the global Drosophila level. He was born and raised in Texas and received his B.S. from the university of North Texas. Dr. Ramos is a first generation Mexican-American and the first in his family to earn an advanced degree. He is currently involved in many mentoring programs and is co-founder of MInDS (Mentoring to Inspire Diversity in Science), a mentoring organization at Johns Hopkins dedicated to the recruitment and retention of minorities and women in science. He was also a co-coordinator of the HHMI-RISE program at Johns Hopkins, a program who’s aim is to expose high school students to biological research. Dr. Ramos was in charge of the 2006 Postdoc Committee exhibition booth.

Juana Ines Rudati, Ph.D.
Dr. Rudati is currently a Research Scientist at Xradia. She received her Ph.D. in atomic physics from Stony Brook. Her postdoc was at Argonne National Laboratory. However, her research project was conducted at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center as part of the SPPS collaboration (producing the shortest x-ray pulse in the world). Her research interest is on the interaction of intense light fields and atoms. During her graduate years, Dr. Rudati was a student board member at SACNAS, an undergraduate student mentor, a Turner Fellow, and an active AGEP affiliate. She was also a member of the Diversity Committee of the National Postdoctoral Association. Dr. Rudati was born in Argentina and in 1988 emigrated to Florida where her family currently resides. Dr. Rudati’s outreach goals are to mentor students and to make the scientific environment more inviting for everyone. Dr. Rudati was a co-moderator of the Minority Postdoc Summit (2004).

Manuel J. Torres, Ph.D.
Dr. Torres is currently a Postdoctoral Associate at the Plant Genome Mapping Laboratory in The Center for Applied Genetic Technologies at the University of Georgia in Athens, GA. He works with Dr. Andrew Paterson on constructing and characterizing physical and genetic maps of crop plants in the genus Brassica and also works on a database to advance comparative genomic analysis of the Brassica. In his research, Dr. Torres examines the properties of plant polyploidy (genome doubling), the concomitant phenomenon of gene duplication, and the evolution of genes, gene families, chromosomes, and genomes following genome doubling in angiosperms. His parents came to this country from Mexico, with no education and no prospects for work. He is bicultural, bilingual, and the first in his immediate family to graduate from college and to earn a graduate degree (University of California, Davis). Dr. Torres is active in community outreach and committed to working with public service partners to increase the numbers of underrepresented minorities in college. Dr. Torres presented a poster about SACNAS Postdoc Committee activities at the 2006 NPA annual meeting.

Lidia Ceballos Yoshida, Ph.D.
Dr. Yoshida, Ph.D. is Academic Coordinator for Outreach and Research Training in Minority Science Programs at the University of California, Irvine. She is the former co-chair of the Postdoc Committee during 2005. Dr. Yoshida is a second generation Mexican-American from Los Angeles, CA. She received her Ph.D. in botany from the University of California, Riverside, M.S. in biology from California State University, Los Angeles and B.A. in Biology from Immaculate Heart College. Before receiving advanced degrees she received a California Teaching Credential from California State University Los Angeles and taught high school science and biology for six years. She coordinates activities for research training programs (MBRS and Bridges to the Baccalaureate) and outreach programs with local middle and high schools. Dr. Yoshida is also a former SACNAS Board member.

Credits

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last updated 8-5-08