Aníbal Tornés Blanco

Anibal is a rising second year PhD student at the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor in the Biological Chemistry program working in Mechanisms of Epigenetic Regulation with Dr.Kaushik Ragunathan. He was born in La Habana, Cuba and migrated short after to Puerto Rico where he pursued his B.S. in Integrative Biology at the University of Puerto Rico - Rio Piedras. During outreach events he realized that as he answered questions for students and elders in his community, more questions than answers emerged. This led him to look for answers directly with the scientists generating them and he became involved with the NIH - RISE program at his home institution. There he learned about diverse research programs which allowed him to work with biomedical informatics, structural biology and even launch an experiment in a NASA rocket! Such vast experiences gave him purpose to become a mentor and part of the Cientifico Latino team to streamline the PhD pathway for diverse generations of scientists to come.