As a child, Sika Zheng, PhD, founding director of the Center for RNA Biology and Medicine and a professor of biomedical sciences at the UC Riverside School of Medicine, was fascinated by the cycle of life and death. While he initially planned to become a physician, his curiosity about the...

Growing up as an undocumented immigrant, Violeta Covarrubias feared going to the doctor with her family in case the visit led to deportation. After obtaining her American permanent residency as a teenager, Covarrubias enrolled at UCLA as an undergraduate, where she volunteered in hospitals and noticed patients in similar situations...

When Keziyah Yisrael, biomedical sciences class of 2024 began working on PhD research focused on the Salton Sea, she had no idea that the project would become an enduring passion and the likely basis for her career. Yisrael majored in microbiology at the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia with...

Growing up in Riverside with two psychotherapist parents, Seiberling knew as a child that she wanted to become a doctor. “I think at a young age, I was just really enamored with the idea of having the knowledge and the ability to bring calm to hectic situations,” she recalled. “There...

As a high school student, Pedro Villa, PhD, began dreaming of a career in medicine after his grandfather was diagnosed with cancer. Yet just as he was set to receive his bachelor’s degree from UC Riverside in 2012, financial and caregiving challenges blocked his path toward medical school. Villa spent...

In 2003, Monica J. Carson, PhD, believed she’d work at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego forever. When friends encouraged her to look at other jobs to be sure she wasn’t missing a better opportunity, she happened upon a job posting at UC Riverside that seemed to describe her...

In high school, Mario Sims, PhD, read a book that would have a profound impact on his life and career: The Philadelphia Negro, by W. E. B. Du Bois. Du Bois, a sociologist and civil rights activist in the early 1900s, linked social conditions, environment, segregation, and other factors to...

Recently, someone pulled aside Cynthia Carolina, the UCR School of Medicine’s director of facilities and operations, to let her know that cars weren’t stopping at a stop sign in the parking lot. “At first I was thinking, that's totally not me,” Carolina recalled, laughing. “But then I started thinking, you...

Shortly after the founding of the UCR School of Medicine, it was time for an inventory audit—but the newly hired staff member in charge of that process realized she didn’t know who was assigned to do it. “She was in panic mode, and she reached out to me because my...

Laughter is often found in an unexpected place at the UCR School of Medicine: the Office of Financial Aid. Kathleen Buckner, the director of financial aid, and Theresa Luther, the assistant director, converse in undertones and long glances before suddenly breaking into giggles. Both women started at the UCR central...

For the past four years, Cristina Gonzalez, now a project analyst in the Department of Social Medicine, Population, and Public Health (SMPPH) at the UC Riverside School of Medicine, would rush to make progress on homework assignments during her lunch break, stay up until 11 pm to take proctored exams...

Hundreds of thousands of spinal surgeries are performed every year in the U.S., with many involving pedicle screws to stabilize the vertebrae. As patients walk around with the implanted screw—many for the rest of their lives—most are likely unaware that the proceeds from one type of pedicle screw helps fund...

Several mornings each week, Isaac Owusu-Frimpong rises with the sun to complete a morning run before heading to work at the UCR School of Medicine. But these are no leisurely jogs. The Division of Biomedical Sciences FAO recently completed two marathons in six weeks and is training for more. In...

Reposted from the University of California news story profiling California's Next Doctors, which includes students from all of medical schools. Inequality can be hard to hide in Aislyn Oulee’s chosen field, dermatology. Having grown up in São Paulo, Brazil, Oulee frequently encountered people on the streets with debilitating skin ailments...

Few individuals have lived the history--or exemplify the mission--of the UC Riverside School of Medicine more than Teresa Cofield, director of the school’s Pathway Programs. Cofield, one of the longest tenured staff members at the SOM, came to UCR as an undergraduate in the late 1980s and has been with...

Reposted from the University of California news story profiling California's Next Doctors, which includes students from all of medical schools. Throughout Skylar Rains’ early childhood, her mom struggled with a chronic illness, and Rains spent a lot of time shuttling back and forth with her to the doctor. She was...

For Black History Month 2023, the UCR SOM social media pages highlighted some of the outstanding contributions of our Black faculty and staff along with several programs and research aimed at supporting the Black community. Teresa Cofield Director of the Pathway Programs See Teresa Cofield's Instagram post Teresa Cofield has...

For UC Riverside’s LACE program director, Moazzum Bajwa, MD, MPH, working as a family medicine physician and advocate comes down to one simple question: “How do you use the skills and resources that you have to make an impact at the one-on-one level and at that larger community level in...

There’s currently no effective treatment for multiple sclerosis (MS), but Seema Tiwari-Woodruff, Ph.D. , the director of UCR's Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program, may be well on her way to finding one. As MS attacks the body, it causes damage to the myelin sheath, the fatty coating around nerve fibers that...

What can people living in the mountains of Peru teach us about people dealing with COVID-19 related oxygen deficiency? Actually, quite a bit. High-altitude exposure leads to hypoxia, or low levels of oxygen in the body—a condition that’s present in COVID-19 and many other medical conditions. Erica Heinrich, Ph.D., an...