Cellular & Molecular

Tori Quintana Biology student

When Tori was writing college essays in her senior year of high school in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in the fall of 2014, she saw herself on the road to becoming a medical doctor. A scholarship to run on the cross-country team helped her choose FLC from among her options, and her first two years in Durango were spent running the trails and investigating the world through Biology.

After her second year at FLC, Tori began a research project looking at the genetics of cancer with the support of a MARC U*STAR scholarship. The next spring, she presented her research at the American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology conference in San Diego, where she was surrounded by peers—undergraduate and graduate students and faculty, from around the country. She felt her first taste of belonging in the scientific community, and also a sense of disbelief at what she’d created for her life. That summer she worked at Sandia National Laboratories as the goal of practicing medicine gave way to the dream of continuing the biomedical research she’d begun.

Following graduation, Tori heads off to the University of Arizona for a PhD program where she continues her research into genetic factors associated with cancer.

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