Brian Estevez

Bio

I was born and brought up in Brooklyn, New York, where there is a strong bottleneck in some of the not-so-friendly areas. There are many poor people and no extracurricular activities. Kids just play on the streets where there are a lot of bad influences. It was a blessing that I had a big, gigantic family because a lot of my real friends growing up were my cousins, so there weren’t any openings for outside influences. That protected me during the sensitive years of my life, and I never felt the need to get too involved in my immediate inner city environment. If I didn’t have such a strong family connection, I don’t know if I would have made it through any of those tough times. Once you get out of the bottleneck, though, you can take advantage of a lot of things. I did my undergraduate work at Queens College and majored in biology, and I had my first research experience as a sophomore. I realized that I liked to do the experiments, I think because I’ve always learned better by doing. I decided to apply to graduate schools that do more research. I ended up at the University of Illinois at Chicago where my mentor was a platelet biologist, and I got my PhD in cellular and molecular pharmacology.

I’m also part of the PENN-PORT Program (Postdoctoral Opportunities in Research and Teaching), which is sponsored by NIH. It combines a traditional mentored postdoctoral research experience with a mentored teaching experience for postdocs who are interested in teaching at undergraduate colleges and universities that are minority-serving institutions. I thought it would be great to circle back and help people who are going through similar things that I went through. Maybe they’ll see my face and think about doing research too — it’s good positive reinforcement to see yourself represented in the system. I also thought teaching would revitalize me because on some days research can be cut and dry: You try an experiment, and if it doesn’t work, you go home and try again the next day. So I wanted to mix things up and get renewed energy from the students.