Naomi Zoé Serrano Colón Email & Phone Number

My first “college” experience was in the summer of 2004, when as a high school student, I had the opportunity to participate in the Pre-College Program of Engineering at the Interamerican University, Bayamón. This experience allowed me to take university-level classes and better prepared me to tackle the challenges of transitioning from high school to college. In August 2004 I started as an undergraduate student majoring in Cellular and Molecular Biology at the University of Puerto Rico Rio Piedras (UPRRP). My scientific journey started as an undergraduate student at the UPRRP when I had the opportunity to be part of Dr. Patricia Burrowes’s herpetology laboratory from 2011 to 2013. During this time, I assisted master's student Patricia Caligari in her research. Among the tasks I performed were attending field trips to three different forests on the island: Carite, Toro Negro, and El Yunque. As part of this team, I was able to apply and develop techniques related to fieldwork, such as preparing, organizing, and inventorying material and equipment, sampling and conducting censuses of frogs (coquíes), and collecting and recording data. In the laboratory, I learned how to handle and enter data into Excel, process and store samples, and extract DNA from samples obtained in the field. During this period, I also participated in discussions of scientific articles and presented them during weekly meetings. Additionally, I was able to carry out my own project, which I presented at PRISM 2012, titled "Status of a pathogenic Chytrid fungus among an endemic tadpole-producing frog in Puerto Rico."