Diversity in Life Sciences

Vivien Ileana Maltez, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Allergy, Immunology, and Rheumatology within the Department of Pediatrics at the University of California San Diego. A California native, she majored in Molecular Biology at Scripps College in Claremont, California, and then jumped coasts when she was selected to join the 2nd cohort of UNC Chapel Hill’s Postbaccalaureate Research Education Program (PREP). She chose to stay and earned her Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology studying bacterial pathogenesis, innate immunity, and cell death. She then transitioned to the National Institutes of Health and was selected for the Postdoctoral Research Associate Training Program to fund her cancer research. She then successfully competed for the MOSAIC K99/R00, a career transition award with an emphasis on improving diversity at the faculty level. She has now returned to her home state as part of the UCSD FIRST Faculty program to head her own laboratory focused on decoding the cellular interactions that dictate tumor responsiveness to immunotherapy. She will primarily leverage a suite of imaging techniques that retain crucial spatial information while providing single cell resolution