Dora Guzmán
Year Participated- 1999
Dora Guzmán participated in the ACE program and MBRS while an undergraduate at UCSC. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University in the Bioengineering Department. Her research investigates biophysical mechanisms of host defense peptides in health and disease, primarily, their involvement in neonatal immunology and development. She graduated from UCSC in 2001 with a bachelor's degree in Chemistry, and went on to obtain her Ph.D. in Chemistry from UCI in 2009. She is happily married with two children (her son is a freshman at UCSC, and her daughter is a first grader). She credits the ACE program at UCSC with having strengthened her foundation in science and further inspiring her to strive for more.
Alejandro Ramirez
Year Participated-2000
Alejandro Ramirez is an alumnus of the MBRS program and completed his BA in Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology in 2002. Following the completion of his undergraduate work he conducted studies aimed at understanding the molecular basis of nucleic acid:protein interactions as a research associate at the University of California, San Francisco. He went on to complete his doctorate degree from Weill Graduate School of Medical Sciences of Cornell University in 2009. His doctoral research focused on identifying and characterizing mammalian tRNA splicing enzymes. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, California where he focuses on HIV-1 vaccine development.