Jorge Contreras

Jorge is currently a graduate student in UCLA's Cellular and Molecular Pathology department while making time for his great wife Teri and beautiful daughter Valeria. Recently, he graduated from California State University Dominguez Hills (CSUDH) with a B.S. in biology. While at CSUDH he worked in Dr. Helen Chun's lab attempting to find the mechanism by which Ataxia Telangectasia Mutated is inactivated. He is a past MBRS-RISE, and MARC-USTAR scholar which allowed me the opportunity to attend national minority research conferences such as ABRCMS and SACNAS. Currently Jorge is researching how microRNAs functionally interact with oncogenes and tumor suppressors to play roles in cancer.

Jorge completed his one year post-doctoral period in the Rao lab following completion of his Ph.D. and is now a post-doctoral fellow at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.