Kristen Garcia
PhD Graduate StudentEmbedded Files
Professor in the Making
Professor in the Making
NIBIB Training in Multi-scale Analysis of Biological Structure and Function T32 Trainee
NIBIB Training in Multi-scale Analysis of Biological Structure and Function T32 Trainee
From an early age, Kristen had two loves: math and teaching. When she was a little girl, her grandfather would indulge her as she assigned him math problems to solve, and she insisted on teaching her younger sister whatever math she herself was learning at the time. She breezed through AP math classes and enrolled as a pre-med student at Boise State. A summer internship at Rutgers exposed her to the world of Bioengineering, where she used mathematical modeling techniques to study circadian rhythms in the human body to time drug delivery effectiveness. Kristen returned to Boise State and began doing research on glucose monitoring devices, graduating summa cum laude in Applied Mathematics.
At UC San Diego, she is a Bioengineering Ph.D. trainee in the Interfaces program in Dr. Daniela Valdez-Jasso’s lab. The Interfaces program has furthered her math passion as training synergizes the intersection of multi-disciplinary fields. Kristen says, “the program has provided me with the opportunity to participate in multi-scale biology research where I’m working with a biventricular mathematical model to help answer sex-dependent questions around pulmonary arterial hypertension.” It has also allowed her to collaborate with students outside her field of study which has expanded her interdisciplinary knowledge base.
Kristen was recently involved with the Simula Summer School in Computational Physiology in Oslo, Norway, in a joint program with UC San Diego, working on a diverse team of graduate students to improve a multi-scale computational model of myocardial energetics and mechanics. She served as a TA at both Boise State and UC San Diego and as a mentor in the Jacobs Undergraduate Mentoring Program.
Kristen has won several academic honors and scholarships along the way. She currently attends professors workshops to learn to be an educator. Her career aspirations are to be a college professor who encourages students to find their passion and support them as they make mistakes, learn, and grow. Kristen also looks forward to making an impact in advancing the diversity of the engineering field.
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