Stefania Vendramin
Stefania was born in Padua, Italy and moved to Mexico City, Mexico when she was five, where she grew up. While pursuing a chemistry degree in the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, she went to South Korea as a student exchange program where she was first introduced to molecular biology and to people from other cultures. In her last years of undergraduate studies, she joined a lab which focus was on the proteinase activity of a bacterial strain important for food production. This experience reinforced her interest in molecular biology.
Stefania is in her fourth year in the Cell and Molecular Biology program in the Biological Sciences department at Florida State University, where she uses a plant as model organism. She is a PhD candidate that is interested in the epigenetic transcriptional changes that control gene expression during stress response in maize, topic of great importance in the current and future years of climate change in this planet. She is part of the Hispanic Graduate Student Association (HiGSA) board and The Cell and Molecular Graduate Student Association (TCGA) board, where she is hoping to achieve a better science communication to both the Hispanic and Biology communities. Stefania is interested in pursuing a post-doctoral position in Europe after her defense.