RISE-ing Stars From Northern Arizona University

Chantel Tsosie at her college graduation, wearing her Tribe’s formal, traditional rug dress that her grandmother made. Credit: Courtesy of Chantel Tsosie. “Science is for everyone. It’s in everything. It exists in cultures everywhere,” says Chantel Tsosie, a master’s student in the NIGMS-supported Research Initiative for Scientific Enhancement (RISE) program at Northern Arizona University (NAU) in Flagstaff. The program aims to prepare a diverse group of students for research careers through culturally relevant support, hands-on research experiences, and a tailored curriculum. Chantel started her bachelor’s studies at NAU as a dental hygiene major and later changed her focus to biomedical sciences. “I’m from the Navajo Nation, and growing up on the reservation, I wasn’t really exposed to research as a career. At NAU, I began taking classes like microbiology and chemistry and found that I loved the lab portions of those. I met scientists who were Indigenous and really started looking up to them,” she says. When a faculty member brought RISE to her attention, she was immediately interested and reached out to its leaders, Catherine Propper, Ph.D., and Anita Antoninka, Ph.D. Chantel soon joined the program and began doing research in the lab of Matthew Salanga, Ph.D. She studies the pregnane X receptor (PXR), which helps cells sense foreign substances. Chantel specifically focuses on how a piece of DNA called exon 6 helps PXR do its job. Better und...
Source: Biomedical Beat Blog - National Institute of General Medical Sciences - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Being a Scientist Profiles Training Source Type: blogs