Personal Statement

Long before starting my career I already admired the scientific community, especially those working in health related fields. When I finished school, I had a clear picture of what I wanted to do: study medicine and build a scientific career around it. I obtained one of the best statewide national qualification exam (ICFES) and decided to study medicine in one of the best public institutions in Colombia: Universidad del Valle. My undergraduate training gave me a general picture of medicine and biology, and helped me define what I really loved about my career, basic sciences. During my social service and furthers trainings I have been devoted to acquire complementary skills for research, and through research in leishmaniasis I have acquired skills

In low resource countries, like Colombia, there are few opportunities for a physician to train outside the clinic and a prospective researcher has to take the most out of every opportunity. Immediately after graduating, I searched and obtained the opportunity to work with the tuberculosis control program in Buga. There, I had the first contact with infectious diseases and the communities affected by them. My time in Buga allowed me to contribute to the community by upgrading all approaches for disease surveillance, follow-up and diagnosis of patients. As a result, we achieved state-wide recognition as a model program. In the following year, I began my work with cutaneous leishmaniasis, a disease which affects poor rural communities, which helped me understand even further the particular needs of communities in relation to infectious diseases and the obstacles that you need to take care for a successful research in those settings. As a result, I have obtained practical bases to successfully interact with the people most at risk of my work area, infectious diseases, a knowledge I hope to apply in my research to facilitate the transfer of results to the

Health research is a multidisciplinary enterprise, a single point of view cannot address the health needs of a population as a whole, and because of that we need to collaborate and integrate multiple branches of knowledge to obtain meaningful results. Scientists who take into account multiple subjects tend to be more successful, and can generalize their results in an easier way. My training has allowed me to complement the clinical knowledge I acquired in medical school with skills in biology, immunology, epidemiology, statistics and informatics. These skills have been useful for me in the identification of metabolic biomarkers, evaluation of immunological response, implementation of proposals, and statistical analysis of other types of data. Integrating this knowledge in our research group has given us a perspective of the different factors that influence the outcome of infectious diseases, in this case leishmaniasis. Also, bioinformatics approaches have given us answers to previously unknown but meaningful questions in leishmaniasis research. Our results and the results of other groups display the importance of addressing multiple factors in a coordinated way when we research an infectious disease. The skills I have developed will be further enhanced given a proper training