Q&A with Ph.D. candidate Carolina Gomez Casas

Q: What brought you to this particular project?

CGC: I met one of the collaborators in June at the Brown Nabrit Conference, hosted by Molecular Biology, Cell Biology and Biochemistry. J.P. Flores (of UNC) was there to present his research, and after his talk he just said from the podium, “I’m working on an atlas for Hispanics and Latinos,” but he didn’t say anything else. I was curious what he meant, so I asked and then after emailing and a Zoom call, I found out there had been a 2020 list with 100 scientists on it. Professor Termini had envisioned expanding it, but needed help to reach out to PIs and that was the plan: To get nominations from PIs of other PIs because this is how you find connections.  

I didn’t know there had been a list of 100 in 2020. I graduated from the University of Delaware in December of 2021, and I wish I could’ve seen or known about this list before, so when I heard about it, I was very interested as a Latina. I think it’s a very useful resource especially for other students that want to find people that are similar to them, and have a similar background. That’s what drew me because I was genuinely interested to know who else was out there in research. Everytime I find a PI that is Latino, I instantly feel identified, and more comfortable. It’s just something that I can relate to and I wish I had had that list before, just to help make more connections, because I think that’s super valuable. Now we’re talking about making this list available to even high schools because that is when students are starting to become interested in science and these types of fields and a lot of times you can get discouraged when you don’t see people who are Latinos in that same field. So I thought it was really nice that students from the early stage can look up other scientists. 

Q: Do you aspire to be in this atlas yourself someday?

CGC: Oh, I hope so!

Q: What are your career goals?

CGC: I really like research and I definitely know that after graduation, I want to do a postdoc. I’m not completely sure between academia and industry. My interest in academia is why I wanted to work on this, because I care and I like these types of initiatives. 

I grew up in Colombia and when I was 16, came to an international boarding school in New Mexico. I didn’t necessarily know biomedical engineering was a thing. There is a test in Colombia for what jobs you are suited for, and mine came up as medicine and engineering. This field is not very common back home, but I researched more and came to know it from there. Not everyone pays attention to the test, but for me it was meaningful because I do like biology, chemistry, and math. My two years of high school in the U.S. were tailored to those subjects. Both my parents are doctors, so they also knew and understood what I was doing. 

Q: What is your current research? 

CGC: The Shukla Lab (Elaine I. Savage Professor of Engineering Anita Shukla, PI) works in drug delivery and biomaterials, focusing on bacterial infections and fungi. I am more on the bacterial infection side: My research is focusing on when you get an infection, how your immune system also plays a role. So I’m looking at how to target the immune system to enhance this bacterial clearance. Specifically on biofilms where we have immunosuppression, I am therefore developing immunomodulatory nanoparticles for treatment of bacterial biofilm infections. This is a little different from the rest of the lab because it’s about what our immune system can do.

It worked out because the Desai Lab (Sorensen Family Dean of Engineering Tejal Desai, PI) was sharing the lab for almost a year while theirs was being set up, and I talked to the postdocs in Prof. Desai’s lab and asked them if this made sense. (The Desai Lab research applies microscale and nanoscale technologies to create new and improved ways to deliver medicine to target sites in the body and to enable the body to heal itself.) For me, it was meant to be that we shared a lab. Professor Shukla has been very supportive and interested, and the science of the role of the immune system is an emerging area now, so it makes sense to open up to the very beginnings of looking into it.

Q: Do you think the atlas might help you professionally?

CGC: This is a great resource for networking, not just for me but for many. We’re still collecting nominations, although we don’t currently have a timeline for the next expansion. This one is focused on faculty and academia, but in the future, there’s an interest in finding people on the industry side as well. It’s a model for diverse scientists - perhaps other historically underrepresented groups will be inspired to create something similar.