The Genetics Society of America Board of Directors is pleased to welcome two new Early Career Representatives. Congratulations to the new appointees, who will serve two-year terms on the Board working to support the needs of all GSA members.
Jacob Ortega is currently a graduate student at Baylor College of Medicine and MD Anderson Cancer Center in the lab of Dr. Swathi Arur. His research focuses on using the roundworm C. elegans as a model to understand how small non-coding RNAs regulate germ cell development and fertility. As a first-generation college student, navigating the unfamiliar landscape of academic science has been a challenging journey for Jacob, and he is grateful for the excellent mentorship and support he has received from organizations such as GSA. Due to those experiences, he dedicates a significant amount of my time away from the bench to (1) organizing resources for students who share those same struggles and (2) ensuring that those resources are truly accessible to students of diverse backgrounds. Thus, as ECS Board Representative, he hopes that his voice can shape GSA’s goals to fulfill the needs of early career scientists in meaningful ways.
Dr. Nicole Torosin did her graduate work on howler monkey genetics in Dr. Knapp’s lab at the University of Utah. Now she is a postdoc in Dr. Ellison’s lab at Rutgers University where she is studying the evolution of 3D genome organization across Drosophila. Currently, she also serves on the GSA’s Early Career Leadership Program’s Career Development Subcommittee.