I was born and raised in the border town of Laredo, Tx and ever since I could remember I have been interested in the fields of medicine and science. When I was about 5 years old, I would always watch “Quincy Medical Examiner”, with my dad. For high school, I went to a Magnet School for Health and Sciences where the curriculum was geared towards medical science. After I graduated from High School in 1999, I began my undergraduate career in Laredo at Texas A&M International University. I have always been an animal lover, so initially I wanted to be a veterinarian, but as I became more involved in research the last 2 years of my undergraduate career, I came to love the nature of research and the possibility of discovery. After I received my Bachelor of Science degree in Biology and Chemistry in 2003, I knew I wanted to continue in the research and science field. At that time, there were anthrax scares and a lot of bioterrorist threats using infectious organisms as a potential bioweapon; it was then when I decided to focus my continuing education in microbiology and infectious disease. I went on to obtain my Masters of Science degree in Biology with a concentration in Microbiology from the University of Texas at San Antonio in 2005. During both my undergraduate and graduate careers, I rotated and worked in several laboratories where my projects ranged from studying the relationship of helicobactor pylori and ulcers, the pathogenesis of parasites and the mechanism of cholera toxin. In August 2005, I began the Ph.D program in the Microbiology and Immunology Department at UTHSCSA. I am currently a 4th year Ph.D student in the program and a member of Dr. Brian Wickes laboratory. Dr. Wickes’ lab is a medical mycology lab with a primary interest in the biology and molecular biology of medically important fungi. The focus of my project is to create an internet-accessible, sequence database for the molecular identification of all known human fungal pathogens, as well as, to develop standardized protocols for PCR and sequencing template preparation that will be applicable to all fungal phyla. A bioinformatics approach will also be addressed. Our goal is to utilize rDNA sequencing to help identify unknown organisms to study the relatedness of isolates that may be involved in outbreaks.