PEW LATIN AMERICAN FELLOWSHIP

摘要

Becoming a great scientist requires exposure to greatness. At a 1997 orientation meeting in Costa Rica for new postdocs, Torsten Weisel, the co-founder of the Pew Latin American Fellows Program, told us that the best scientists are not necessarily more creative or smarter than everyone else, but that they had the opportunity in their junior years to conduct and discuss science in prime environments. I earned my PhD in 1996 from the University of Chile in Santiago, studying how ions move through proteins extracted from neurons. I wanted to apply that work in living brains. Senior members in my department told me about the Latin American fellows programme and helped me to find a postdoctoral adviser.