Coffee Break Spotlight 4

Ms. Maria Mercado

Our fourth Coffee Break Spotlight featured Maria Mercado, Fraser lab PhD student and Naloomar Co-Founder. Maria spoke about her experiences with the LSCDS and how they helped her uncover what her interests were following grad school!

Unsure if a specific field is right for you? Maria reflects on her time at the LSCDS and how being in positions she was previously unfamiliar with allowed her to gain perspective and find a role she loves. Her advice? Try everything! You never know what will click for you.

Listen to our full Coffee Break Spotlight to hear more about Maria’s career path, including some info on launching a start-up and managing through COVID.

Maria is a current PhD student in the department of Molecular Genetics’ Fraser lab, whose research focuses on using natural variation to study anaerobic respiration in C. elegans. She first joined LSCDS in her second year of graduate studies as a Finance and Business Development Associate, and then stayed on for the following years to spearhead the development of LSCDS’ Job Shadowing Program. Following her two-year tenure as LSCDS’ President from 2019-2021, she then moved on to co-found Naloomar, a UTEST-backed start-up venture spun out of the Fraser lab that uses their novel sensor technology to enable massively high-throughput metabolomics.