May 15, 2020
Second-year Ph.D. student Rebeca Stiepel has been awarded a prestigious predoctoral fellowship from the Ford Foundation. The predoctoral fellowship provides three years of support for graduate students who are pursuing a career in teaching and/or research.
Stiepel studies in the School’s Division of Pharmacoengineering and Molecular Pharmaceutics in Kristy Ainslie, Ph.D.’s lab. She first worked with Ainslie during one of her undergraduate summers as a participant in the Summer of Learning and Research (SOLAR) program.
She said this early exposure helped her decide on graduate school at UNC-Chapel Hill, and she also wanted to return to Ainslie’s lab. She had other research experiences during undergrad at the University of Southern California, but she was drawn to the interdisciplinary nature of graduate school at UNC and the Ainslie lab.
“We all come from different backgrounds and work together on something that combines all of our talents,” she said of her co-investigators.
Her graduate research focuses on developing antigen-specific treatment for autoimmune disorders. She is currently developing a “reverse vaccine” for multiple sclerosis (MS). This type of research is especially applicable to MS and other autoimmune diseases, since this strategy aims to encourage immune tolerance to self without blanket immunosuppression, she said.
She said she applied to the fellowship because its mission of diversity and inclusion in research aligned with her own principles. Outside of the lab, she helps with an outreach program at the Morehead Planetarium in Chapel Hill called Inspiring Meaningful Programs and Communication Through Science (IMPACTS). She plans to remain committed to diversity and inclusion while she pursues a career in academia. She said her own experiences as a Mexican-American attending high school in rural California helped her understand some might not always feel prepared for higher education in STEM, and she wants to change that.
“I’ve enjoyed being involved in outreach with younger people of diverse backgrounds and encouraging them to explore science as an exciting field,” she said. “As I move forward in my career, I want to continue to lead others to find their potential in STEM by becoming a mentor and running my own lab.”
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