Nicolás D.

About

Hi! I’m a student at the Weill Cornell / Rockefeller / Sloan Kettering Tri-Institutional MD-PhD Program. Previously, I studied a new mechanism of axon degeneration at Stanford and earned a B.S. Intensive in Biology and in Literature at Yale.

Experience

• Biomedical Fellow at The Rockefeller University
  Aug 2025 - Present · 11 mos

• MD-PhD Student at Joan & Sanford I. Weill Medical College of Cornell University
  Jul 2023 - Present · 3 yrs

• Research Professional (Marc Tessier-Lavigne Lab) at Stanford University
  Nov 2020 - Feb 2023 · 2 yrs 4 mos

• Research Assistant (Junjie Guo Lab) at Yale University School of Medicine
  May 2019 - Sep 2020 · 1 yr 5 mos

  • Investigated the 5’ untranslated region (5’ UTR) of the principal gene causing familial amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (fALS) to determine that long 5’ UTRs promote noncanonical translation • Developed a computational pipeline using Linux, AWK, and R to examine the relation between mRNA sequence length and start codon selection across the transcriptomes of various species • Analyzed high-throughput ribosome footprinting data and tested whether 5’ UTR length is a factor in start codon selection across the transcriptome • Studied primary scientific literature and conducted preliminary experiments to design award-winning grant proposals that received $3,500 of funding • Co-authored Yale NeuroDay poster on C9orf72 repeat-associated non-AUG (RAN) translation with Dr. Lian-Huan Wei

• Davenport College Aide at Yale University
  Aug 2018 - May 2020 · 1 yr 10 mos

  Worked in the Davenport Head of College Office facilitating administrative operations, composing emails to students, distributing room keys, designing posters, sorting mail, assisting visitors; set up, served food, and cleaned up College events