From Mini-Brains to Human Minds

An immigrant from Mexico, Dr. Christian Cazares received his B.A. in Cognitive Science at UC Berkeley funded by the Gates Millennium Scholarship. He spent the following two years doing post-baccalaureate research as a member of the PennPREP program at the University of Pennsylvania. He then earned a Ph.D. in Neuroscience at UC San Diego with Dr. Christina Gremel. During this time, he was awarded the NSF-GRFP, became a SfN Neuroscience Scholars Program fellow, and was awarded the Leon Thal Award for Excellence in Neuroscience Graduate Research. Now, as a DSPAN and IRACDA postdoctoral fellow working in Dr. Bradley Voyek's lab at UC San Diego, he aims to bridge human cortical organoid physiology with human behavior and EEG. When not in the lab, Christian skateboards and runs a graduate organization (Colors of the Brain) he co-founded which mentors undergraduate students interested in applying to STEM graduate programs. In the Summer, Christian Co-directs the CoB-KIBM Scholars program in collaboration with the UC San Diego Kavli Institute for Brain and Mind, which offers a paid summer research experience to undergraduates from historically marginalized and excluded backgrounds in neuroscience.