BACA PEYNADO, PAULINA

I was born in Chihuahua, Chihuahua, Mexico in 1992. I obtained my Bachelor's degree in Nutritional Sciences from the Autonomous University of Chihuahua (UACH) in 2016. Interested in researching metabolic diseases, I went to Mexico City to do my year of social service at the National Institute of Genomic Medicine (INMEGEN) in the Immunogenomics and Metabolic Diseases Laboratory (LIEM) studying the adipose tissue and the genetic predisposition of the Mexican population to metabolic diseases. I then applied to the Biomedical Sciences Doctorate program at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) with a project to study the epigenetic alterations in the visceral adipose tissue associated to the development of type 2 diabetes in patients with obesity. During my PhD, I participated in multiple omic projects analyzing the expression and methylation patterns in tissues and cells from patients with obesity, and also got involved studying the genomic landscape of the amerindians and mestizo populations. I went to Madison, Wisconsin in USA to do a summer internship at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery in the Saha Laboratory to learn the CRISPR/Cas9 technique in 2019. I worked in the "Exposition to Aflatoxin B1 hepatocellular cancer" collaboration project from the NIH with the LIEM. I then obtained my PhD degree in 2023, graduating with 1 scientific publication as main author, and 6 as co-author (2 more to be published). Also in 2023, I started working as a Full Time Associated Technician at the Genomic Epidemiology of Big Populations Laboratory in the Experimental Medicine Unit (UME) of the Faculty of Medicine from the UNAM where we study how lifestyle, physical, metabolic, and genetic factors influence de major causes of death in Mexican adults on the largest prospective study of a Latin-American population, the Mexico City Prospective Study (MCPS) in collaboration with Oxford University.