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Alejandra Figueroa-Clarevega
Those who know Alejandra Figueroa-Clarevega best always assumed she would become a doctor. They recall an endless curiosity about the body, as well as volunteer work with the medical brigades that brought care to children in remote areas of Honduras, where she grew up. To Figueroa-Clarevega, too, it seemed an obvious career path. "I thought that if you liked biology, you had to become a doctor," she says. "I had very little idea what research was."
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Alejandra Figueroa-Clarevega
Washington University
St Louis, MO
Photo: Ben Weddle
A high-resolution photograph is available on request.
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Yet Figueroa-Clarevega embraced the unknown. After leaving her family to attend Loyola University in Chicago, she sought out a summer research opportunity in a microecology lab. There, she investigated how burning fossil fuels affects nitrogen-fixing bacteria in the environment, and realized that she could discover answers to her own scientific questions.
After her freshman year, Figueroa-Clarevega transferred to Washington University in St. Louis. Her new environment was a good fit, she says, because "Wash U. has an incredible commitment to the biomedical sciences and they encourage students at the undergraduate level to take an active role in research."
The following summer, Figueroa-Clarevega was invited to participate in HHMI's Exceptional Research Opportunities Program (EXROP), which provides talented undergraduates from disadvantaged backgrounds with summer research experiences in the labs of HHMI investigators and HHMI professors. She worked with HHMI investigator Norbert Perrimon at Harvard Medical School, where she studied a signaling pathway that helps guide growth and development in the fruitfly Drosophila. She then spent her junior and senior years in the lab of HHMI professor Sarah Elgin at Washington University, studying how DNA packaging can influence gene expression in Drosophila.
"Ale has the intellectual talent, enthusiasm, and dedication to make a contribution," said Elgin. "I anticipate that she will choose a branch of the biomedical sciences where she can see ways her research can have an impact on a world health problem."
After her time in Elgin's lab, Figueroa-Clarevega was committed to pursuing a career in research, but was still seeking a way to use science to help others. The summer after she graduated, she studied tropical infectious diseases at the Pan-American Health Organization in Washington, D.C., and things began to fall into place. "It became very personal, because a lot of these diseases exist in countries like Honduras," she says.
There, Figueroa-Clarevega learned of several diseases that, despite their dramatic impact on global health, receive little attention from researchers. She became particularly interested in river blindness, a disease where "a little bit of research could go a long way," she says. The disease, which is caused by a worm that breeds in fast-flowing rivers, is the second-leading cause of blindness worldwide. The only drug available to treat it reduces transmission, but does not destroy the parasite.
Figueroa-Clarevega, 22, is currently researching graduate programs, looking for one in which she can combine her interests in infectious diseases, genetics, and public health. Figueroa-Clarevega wants to use her Ph.D. research to find better ways to diagnose and treat river blindness.
In the meantime, she is a research technician in Matthew Gibson's lab at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research in Kansas City, Missouri, where she studies genes that contribute to epithelial development in Drosophila. "Figueroa-Clarevega is a remarkable young scientist with tremendous potential," Gibson says. "She represents a rare combination of the ability to think big with the determination to work hard at the bench."
She also volunteers at a hospital in Kansas City, playing games, doing crafts, and talking with pediatric patients. "When you're at a lab bench all day, it's hard to remember that what you're doing has a great purpose," she says. "Being in a hospital is a reminder. The medicines kids are taking were once someone's project at a bench."
One day, Figueroa-Clarevega hopes to establish her own research lab in Honduras, where she can study diseases that affect people in her country. She also wants to use her own lab as a place where young Hondurans can visit to learn about scientific research—and perhaps inspire them to become scientists. "I want to bring students into the lab and let them experience it," she said. "I think research is wonderful, and so interesting—I wish everyone had the opportunity to be exposed to it."
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