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Monday, July 10, 2023

By Julia Hettiger

UTEP Marketing and Communications

Four UTEP researchers received Blue Ribbon Awards for their work conducted through UTEP’s Border Biomedical Research Center (BBRC). They placed within the top 10% of presenters at the Research Centers in Minority Institutions Consortium (RCMI) National Conference, which focused on health disparities research. Their findings analyzed the causes and effects of diseases that disproportionately impact Hispanic individuals, including leukemia, kidney disease and lymphoma.

Numerous faculty members and undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral researchers represented UTEP at the conference. Robert Kirken, Ph.D., dean of the College of Science, moderated a panel on equitable medicine development, which focused on helping patients typically underrepresented in medical research to be more involved in pharmaceutical and treatment development. He also spoke about preparing future generations of minority scientists as part of a panel with presidents and leaders from other universities and research centers.

“The RCMI Consortium National Conference was an exciting meeting and opportunity to view the amazing health disparities research that our minority-serving institutions are performing,” Kirken said. “I am confident these discoveries will further benefit our communities, including El Paso. I was also impressed with the research efforts of our faculty and student scientists.”

Three students and one professor earned the prestigious Blue Ribbon Award for their poster presentations and abstracts:

· Luis A. Teran Rodriguez, a senior undergraduate student in biology, shared his research to understand why Hispanic patients have higher rates of various forms of leukemia by analyzing specific cell mutations in those patients.

· Omar J. Rodriguez Moncivais, a doctoral graduate student in biology, presented his research analyzing issues in signaling processes between cells that could cause mutations and explain a higher rate of leukemia diagnoses among Hispanic patients.

· Lisett Contreras, Ph.D., a BBRC postdoctoral fellow, discussed her study to identify genetic variations among Hispanic children and adolescents that could be used to identify mutations contributing to malignant tissue in those with leukemia.

· Ming-Ying Leung, Ph.D., director of the computational science program and professor in mathematical sciences, shared her research to create a dataset of variants found in patients with leukemia that could be used for bioinformatics analysis and hypothesis testing.

The conference held in April in Bethesda, Maryland, served as a convergence of health researchers and professionals dedicated to transforming research within the medical field to address diseases that disproportionately affect underserved populations. 

“For more than a decade, we’ve been participating in the conference, and it is an opportunity for faculty here at UTEP to take both their graduate and undergraduate students, as well as postdoctoral staff, and present their work,” said Georgialina Rodriguez, Ph.D., research associate professor of biological sciences with the BBRC. “It’s an opportunity for us to network and make connections and find out if there’s any opportunity for collaboration between our institution and other groups.”

For more information about the RCMI Consortium National Conference and to read abstracts of the research presented by UTEP students and faculty, please visit .