Naiara, or Nai (as most people call her),Ìýis currently a third yearÌýgraduate student in the Niswander Lab inÌýthe Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology (MCDB) Department. She graduated from Winona State University in 2017 with a B.Sc. in Cell and Molecular Biology. She moved to the USA in 2014 from Brazil, where she was born, and moved to Boulder in 2018, where she has been working for ¶¶ÒõÂÃÐÐÉä since. In 2020, Naiara volunteered to run Covid-19 tests at the Wardenburg Student Health Center at ¶¶ÒõÂÃÐÐÉä Boulder, where she later on became the lead technologist for Covid-19 RT-PCR tests. As an undergraduate student she interned at the Mayo Clinic and participated in the 2016 Experimental Biology conference where she won an award and an honorable mention. Recently, Nai was awarded the NIH/¶¶ÒõÂÃÐÐÉä Molecular Biophysics Training grant for the academic year '22-23 and '23-24.
Outside of lab work, NaiaraÌýhas a passion for teaching, recently discovered as being a teaching assistant during her first graduate year! She has been involved with volunteering since an early age and has pledged to keep on volunteering throughout her time at ¶¶ÒõÂÃÐÐÉä. She is currently involved with other ¶¶ÒõÂÃÐÐÉä teams likeÌýS.C.O.P.E., andÌýScience Under the Dome. InÌýthe past she was the secretary of Boulder County Tutors, a non-profit organizationÌýthat servedÌýpre-college students affected by the MarshallÌýfireÌýthat happened in December 2021.ÌýIn her spareÌýtime, she loves to do gardening, read a good book, gaming,Ìýhiking with her husband, watching movies and playing with her two adorable cats.