MARIANA ROCHA ALVAREZ

Mariana graduated from Watsonville High in 2015, and Yale University in 2020 where she received her degree in Biology. She just finished working at UC Santa Cruz as a NIH research scholar in a neuroscience lab that studies the development of the visual cortex. She plans to continue on to a Neuroscience PhD degree fall 2021 at Emory University to study the biological basis of mental disorders. She wanted to start RISE because she knows how difficult it can be to apply to college as a first-generation and low-income student, and because she sees how talented the students in our community are. One fun fact about her is that she played Rugby in college!