The Lonely Pipette : helping scientists do better science

TLP #31 : A recipe for resilience - Alicia Rojas Araya

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This month Alicia Rojas tells us about her journey from Costa Rica to Israel and back, in search of pathogens and parasites

  • Alicia shares the personal difficulties of being far from home and how she missed family and food
  • She reflects on coming back to Costa Rica to explore its rich biodiversity
  • She recalls the challenges of returning from a luxurious postdoc at the Weizmann Institute to setting up her own lab in Costa Rica during a pandemic
  • She discusses the need to be resilient and creative and build collaborations
  • She is proud to be “doing the best we can with the limited resources we have”
  • As a mentor, she stresses that every student is different and she tries to keep a helicopter-view of everything that is going on 
  • Alicia gets up really early to complete work and make time for her family in the afternoon
  • She recommends to finish one task before you start the next one


She mentioned these labs, scientists and institutions
University of Costa Rica : https://www.ucr.ac.cr/
Hebrew University of Jerusalem : https://en.huji.ac.il/
Neta Regev-Rudzki laboratory : https://www.weizmann.ac.il/Biomolecular_Sciences/regev/
Weizmann Institute of Science: https://www.weizmann.ac.il/pages/
Research Center for Tropical Diseases.  : http://www.ciet.ucr.ac.cr/en/about-ciet

To find out more about Alicia visit these links
Alicia’s lab : https://www.thetropicalwormlab.com/
Alicia’s LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/alicia-rojas-30215b1aa/
On Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/thetropicalwormlab_ucr/
On Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/thetropicalwormlabUCR/

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To find out more about Renaud and Jonathan :

More about the soundtrack :
Music by Amaria - Lovely Swindler https://soundcloud.com/amariamusique/