Pablo Silva Rodríguez
Defended the Thesis: Aug 29th, 2024
Thesis Advisor: Dr. Elena Silva
Thesis Title: OF SOX11 AND FROGS: THE ROLE OF SOX11 IN CNS DEVELOPMENT AND IN
DISEASE, MODELING NEURODEVELOPMENTAL DISORDERS IN XENOPUS LAEVIS
Originally from Guatemala, he earned his B.S. in Biology in 2010 and a Licentiate degree in Biology in 2013 from Universidad del Valle de Guatemala. His undergraduate research focused on Gram-positive pathogens of tomato, specifically Clavibacter michiganensis subsp. michiganensis. In 2012, he obtained an M.S. in Molecular Medicine from the University of Sheffield, UK. His master’s research project, “Transcriptional Regulation of the Neuronal Function in the Developing Zebrafish Central Nervous System,” was supervised by Vincent Cunliffe at the MRC Centre for Developmental and Biomedical Genetics.
In 2013, he completed a short internship at the University of Chile under Miguel Concha, where he studied cilio-genesis and cilio-pathies using zebrafish. He was awarded a Fulbright-LASPAU scholarship to pursue a Ph.D. in Biology at Georgetown, beginning in 2015, and joined Elena Silva’s lab group. He has now completed his dissertation, which built upon his research interests in developmental biology, neurobiology, molecular and cellular mechanisms of disease and adaptation, transcriptional regulation, and evolutionary biology.