Ana Vazquez-Pagan, Ph.D.

Since 2012, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Johns Hopkins University, Morehouse School of Medicine, and Tulane University have offered mentored research training through the UJMT Fogarty Global Health Fellowship program, funded by the Fogarty International Center within the National Institutes of Health. This consortium brings together four top-ranked universities and their respective international research training sites in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Trainee research projects are supported by mentors with expertise in clinical, public health, laboratory, and implementation research. Each trainee works with a team of mentors, including at least one U.S. and one international member to monitor the trainee’s progress and provide on-site supervision. For my Fogarty year, I am being mentored by Dr. Linnie Golightly from Weill Cornell Medicine, Dr. Jonathan Stiles from Moorehouse School of Medicine and Dr. Ben Gyan at Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research. My project is focused on better understanding cerebral malaria pathogenesis in infants and the role of placental malaria in preeclampsia and will take me to the Lyden lab in Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City for 2 months and Gyan's lab at Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research for 10 months.

As part of my Fogarty Fellowship, I am being mentored by Dr. Linnie Golightly from Weill Cornell Medicine, Dr. Jonathan Stiles from Moorehouse School of Medicine and Dr. Ben Gyan at Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research. My project is focused on better understanding cerebral malaria pathogenesis in infants and the role of placental malaria in preeclampsia and will take me to the Lyden lab in Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City for 2 months and Gyan's lab at Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research for 10 months. Throughout my fellowship, I am still working in collaboration with the Lyden Lab and mentored by Dr. Golightly while in the field working in parallel with our clinical research sites in Ghana.

In the Schultz-Cherry lab, I explored the interactions between viruses and their host, especially in our most vulnerable populations. My particularly interest was in understanding how pregnancy and obesity can impact influenza disease severity. My hope is to use our gained basic scientific knowledge to guide the development and improvement of current influenza vaccines and therapeutic strategies for these populations.

I had the opportunity to serve as a Teaching Assistant (TA) for a Principles of Biomedical Research course for undergraduate students at the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Campus led by Dr. Jose Rodríguez. This course mainly focused on an introduction to doing research, discussing journal articles and distinct laboratory methods that will be useful in the students’ careers. While I was not able to show these methods in person due to the pandemic, I carefully crafted presentations that walked students through experiments. Responsibilities for the TA role included: building the curriculum and syllabus for the course, choosing lecturers intentionally, selecting journal articles for discussions in class, holding office hours to help students with concepts that were difficult to grasp during class, leading journal discussions, and giving lectures to students on topics that I had studied thoroughly.

I had the opportunity to serve as a Teaching Assistant (TA) for the Infectious Diseases Module as part of the graduate student curriculum. This course mainly focused on an introduction to different pathogens such as viruses, bacteria, and parasites while discussing journal articles and distinct laboratory methods that will be useful to the students’ careers. While I was not able to show these methods in person due to the pandemic, I carefully crafted presentations that walked students through experiments. Responsibilities for the TA role included: holding office hours to help students with concepts that were difficult to grasp during class, leading journal discussions, and giving occasional lectures to students on topics that I had studied thoroughly.

Ensured safety of residence halls through weekly proctoring shifts, building duty shifts, and on-call assistance to situations requiring immediate intervention. Planned and executed meaningful programs for 650 residents to foster community and meet specific learning goals.

Providing tailored tutoring services in all levels of Spanish and General Chemistry for students at Northeastern University. I was a CRLA Level 2 Peer Tutor during my time at the Peer Tutoring Program and participated in the New England Peer Tutor Association Conference for 3 out of my 4 years at Northeastern. In order to become CRLA Level 2 Certified Tutor, you must: Provide proof of CRLA Level 1 Tutor Certification Successfully complete a minimum of 10 topics of a minimum of 10 hours of tutor training; a minimum of 5 hours face-to-face, interactive; and the remaining 5 hours either completed via the Canvas course, SAIL workshops, conferences, etc. Successfully complete at least 25 additional hours of actual tutoring experience I successfully completed all of these requirements and received the Outstanding Service Award as a Senior at Northeastern University during the Peer Tutoring Program End-of-Year Award Ceremony.

During my first year at Northeastern, I served as a research assistant in the laboratory of Dr. Meni Wanunu. My project focused on improving the specificity of solid-state nanopores as a platform for next-generation DNA sequencing. During my time in the Wanunu lab, we showed that osmylated dsDNA produces a distinct signature from unlabeled dsDNA. This work served as a basic proof of principle for contrast enhancement from specific bases, a step towards error reduction during nanopore-based DNA sequencing and it resulted in a second author publication.

During the summer and fall of my senior year of college, I was 1 of 8 undergraduate students that received a fellowship to participate in the CaNCURE research program, a full-time 6-month research training program. I was placed in the laboratory of Dr. Ross Berbeco, Department of Radiation Oncology in the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and worked under the guidance of Dr. Ross Berbeco, Dr. Srinivas Sridhar and Dr. Wilfred Ngwa. CaNCURE allowed me to use my expertise in nanotechnology to study combinatorial therapy using an in vitro model of lung cancer. My project explored combining the radiosensitizing effect of gold nanoparticles (GNPs) with the DNA-repair inhibiting ability of NanoTalazoparib (nTLZ), a liposomal formulation of the PARP inhibitor, Talazoparib (TLZ). I presented this work at the CaNCURE Nanomedicine Day, the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting, and had oral presentations at the Global Health Catalyst Summit sponsored by the Harvard Medical School/Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in May of 2018 and at the 3rd Annual St. Jude Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences National Symposium for Undergraduate Research. This experience also taught me the value of productive collaborations as I was able to synthesize and characterize GNPs for other laboratories at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. I ended up staying for longer than 6 months once the fellowship was over.

Safari4u offers learning-based programs for pre-vets, vet students, vet techs, vet nurses and anyone wanting to become involved with the care and welfare of animals. I successfully completed a 3-week-immersive program when it was of interest for me to pursue a dual DVM/PhD degree.

I was 1 of 5 undergraduate students selected to participate in the Hannover Exchange Program; a collaboration that provides opportunities for international experiential learning that is supported by the German Academic Exchange Service. I was selected and ultimately, awarded a Presidential Global Scholars Award to fund all associated costs. The Hannover Exchange Program sends Northeastern undergraduate co-op students to work in labs at the Leibniz University of Hannover. I worked as a research assistant at the Institute of Plant Genetics in Hannover, Germany where my research skills significantly broadened under the mentorship of Dr. Thomas Reinard and Dr. Jens Bosch, whose research is focused on plant biotechnology. I focused on the production of recombinant proteins using the duckweed Wolffia Australiana, which has high potential as a bioreactor. I performed plant transformations of Wolffia Australiana by agrobacterium and electroporation in order to successfully clone proteins such as human interleukin-15 (IL-15) after Gibson Assembly. Through this work I gained an appreciation for a unique model system, plants, while learning state-of-the-art molecular biological methods. Although I realized plant biotechnology was not the field I would focus on for my future scientific career, I was able to grow scientifically and personally while adapting to a different environment, language, and training style.

Bachelor's of Science in Biology Minor in French Language

Participated in a study abroad semester at University of Canterbury located in Christchurch, New Zealand. I received a scholarship by the University of Canterbury to help with associated costs.