Anai Campos Contreras named 2023 Pew Latin American Fellow in the Biomedical Sciences
The Pew Charitable Trusts has named Anai Campos Contreras, incoming UC Irvine postdoctoral fellow in pharmacy and pharmaceutical sciences, a 2023 Pew Latin American Fellow in the Biomedical Sciences. Campos received a Ph.D. in biomedical sciences in 2022 from the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Later this summer, she will join the laboratory of Thomas Martinez, UCI assistant professor of pharmaceutical sciences. She said her long-term research interests include characterizing the cell mechanisms involved in cancer formation and identifying new therapeutic targets. The Pew fellowship provides Campos funding to support a salary stipend for two years of her time at UCI. At the end of the postdoctoral training period, the Pew Trust grants additional funds to purchase equipment and supplies for setting up a lab when she returns to Latin America. “My postdoctoral training at UCI will enhance my career and will allow me to learn cutting edge techniques in cancer genomics and proteomics,” said Campos. “I am grateful to have been awarded this distinction and I am committed to find the role of recently discovered microproteins that could represent potential drug targets or could serve as biomarkers to detect early pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma.”