Raquel Castellanos is a Ph.D. candidate in the laboratory of Dr. Bernice Morrow.
Why I Chose Einstein
I wanted to continue my graduate career at a top research institution that had a competitive yet collaborative and friendly environment. After my interview at Einstein, I realized that I had found that place.
What’s Exciting About My Research at the Moment
I am focusing on inner-ear development, specifically looking at upstream regulation of a transcription factor called tbx1. Currently, I’m in the process of analyzing regulatory regions in the tbx1 locus.
Best Thing About Being a Student at Einstein
Everything is the result of collaboration. For my third lab rotation, I worked with zebrafish because I wanted to do something related to development. When I declared my lab with Bernice Morrow, she had begun some work with zebrafish, although her lab primarily uses the mouse model. I said to her, "I think this would be a cool model to work with to answer this question we are trying to answer." She was completely open to it, and we now have two of us working with zebrafish.