2017 - 2018 Academic Year PREP Participants

Michelle Mosqueda, BS

Michelle graduated from the University of Massachusetts Boston in 2016 with a degree in Biology. Prior to starting the Pathway to Graduate Study Program (PGSP), she participated as a summer research intern through the collaboration of the Health Equity Scholars Program (HESP) and UMass Chan Center for Health Equity Intervention Research (CHEIR). Her research examined the relationship between parental health literacy and asthma management of children 3-12 years of age. She also gained research experience as a volunteer at Dr. Tiffany Donaldson’s Behavioral Psychopharmacology Neuroscience Lab at Umass Boston. She is currently working in Dr. Sharon Cantor’s lab exploring the role of defective DNA repair in cancer development and progression.

Alexander Park, BS

Alexander earned his BS in Biochemistry from Boston College. Following graduation, he worked in Andrei Korostelev’s lab at UMass Chan. His work focused on: 1) Elucidating the human-pathogen interaction between Salmonella and human epithelial cells; and 2) Bypassing premature stop codons as a potential therapeutic therapeutic strategy for diseases such as muscular dystrophy. He now aims to pursue his interest in Neurobiology and is currently working in Dr. Christelle Anaclet's lab to elucidate sleep's significance in cognition.

Iris Valeria Rivera Flores, BS

Iris Valeria Rivera Flores moved to Massachusetts from Puerto Rico in 2017. She earned a BS in microbiology from the University of Puerto Rico, Humacao in 2016 and then worked in the same institution as a laboratory technician before joining the PGSP. She is interested in studying addiction and how it affects and changes the brain. She is currently doing research in Dr. Haley Melikian’s lab in the Brudnick Neuropsychiatric Research Institute.

Jenna Tancredi, BS

Jenna completed the requirements for her BS degree from the University of Connecticut in spring 2017. She is currently completing the requirements for a specialization in Physiology and Neurobiology to be awarded in 2018.  While at the University, Jenna acquired research experience in Dr. Ted Rasmussen’s lab where she studied epigenetic regulation of apolipoprotein genes. She is currently working in Dr. Tom Fazzio’s lab, which studies the role of chromatin regulatory proteins in stem cell self-renewal and differentiation.