SPARTAN SPOTLIGHT
For Serena Ortiz, Biology is a Miracle
By Cassie Myers
Serena Ortiz, ’22 BS, ’24 MS Biology, is many things — lab manager, scientist, researcher — and while succeeding in all these areas, she remains modest. So modest, in fact, that she was surprised to even be nominated for the CSUBiotech Eden Graduate Student Researcher Award, and even more surprised when out of 23 CSU campuses and four other impressive finalists, she won it.
“After hearing everybody's talk, I thought it was really a toss-up,” she remembers. “It wasn't until they were announcing the winner and describing the actual awardee that I thought, ‘I feel like that’s me.’ My whole body went numb when they announced my name. I was like, ‘Is this real?’”
It was very real, of course — and a great reminder to both Ortiz and her supporters of how far she’d come.
Her journey to San José State began in 2018. She was a Gavilan Community College student at the time and applied for a STEM summer internship in the lab of Katie Wilkinson, professor of biological sciences. “Her research really stuck out to me,” Ortiz says.
And so began a very fruitful collaboration. Ortiz returned the following summer to continue her internship, and then transferred to SJSU in fall 2019 to finish her bachelor’s as an NIH-funded Research Training Initiative for Student Enhancement (RISE) scholar. She’s grateful for her time in the RISE program, which funded her continued work in the Wilkinson lab and provided trainings and workshops to help keep her on the path to a doctorate.
When she graduated with her bachelor’s, she went on to her master’s, and is expected to graduate this spring. She’s been Wilkinson’s lab manager since 2022.
Serena Ortiz won the CSUBiotech Eden Graduate Student Award in 2023, beating out competitors from all 23 CSU campuses. Photo by Jim Gensheimer.
You can draw a direct line from that first internship to the CSUBiotech Eden Award, and Ortiz does.
“If Dr. Wilkinson hadn’t given me a chance, I wouldn't be here,” she explains. “I have to thank her for everything I have been able to do. She was one of the first female scientists I'd ever met. And from the very beginning, when I struggled with my academics for a myriad of reasons, she was always there, pushing me and encouraging me to continue.”
For Wilkinson’s part, the collaboration has been essential. “I was ecstatic that she decided to transfer to SJSU,” she says. “During her time working with me, Serena has been an integral part of almost every project, and has trained most of the students currently in the lab. It is not an exaggeration to say that the productivity of my lab would have been dramatically lower over the last five years had Serena not been a part of it.”
As if that’s not enough, Ortiz has also co-authored two peer-reviewed papers in her time with Wilkinson and will be a co-author on two more to be submitted this spring.
“During her time working with me, Serena has been an integral part of almost every project, and has trained most of the students currently in the lab. It is not an exaggeration to say that the productivity of my lab would have been dramatically lower over the last five years had Serena not been a part of it.”
— Katie Wilkinson
Serena Ortiz has been Katie Wilkinson's lab manager since 2022. Photo by Jim Gensheimer.
A love of biology
Ortiz is the first scientist in her family, but her love of biology goes back to high school. “To me, human life is just really magical,” she says. “The fact that we're able to grow from these little single-celled organisms in our mom's uterus to these multicellular complex human beings — that's what really drew me into biology. My high school teacher opened the class by saying, ‘If you ever want to see a miracle, just look in the mirror.’ That really stuck with me.”
She’s carried that enthusiasm with her all these years, through various academic challenges and years of research. Her current thesis work (the work awarded by CSU Biotech) involves muscle proprioception, which is the ability of the brain to sense and understand where the body is in space (a crucial function for balance, walking and everyday life).
Ortiz’s focus in particular is looking at voltage gated sodium channels in muscle proprioceptors. These channels help neurons “detect the changing length of your muscle and send it to the brain, and the brain uses it to develop proprioception,” as she explains. For example, when proprioception is working properly, if you stretch, you know that you’re lengthening your arm muscles and that they’ll take up more space, and you adjust your movements and expectations accordingly.
Ortiz’s experiments include “knocking out” or deleting these channels and observing what happens next. Previous research has observed what these deletions or mutations do in the brain, but she is examining what they do in the peripheral nervous system, the neurons that live in the limbs and other extremities of the body.
Many diseases, including epilepsy, are linked to mutations in these channels, so any scientific discoveries in this area could make a huge difference in quality of life for many people. As Ortiz explains, there are a lot of epileptic therapeutic drugs on the market that “really only address the brain and not so much the periphery. And it’s been shown that in some cases, even though epileptic patients get some relief [from current therapies], a lot of them are still affected by uncomfortable motor behaviors, even while they’re on medication.”
Ultimately, understanding the different channels and how they affect proprioception could lead to better, more effective treatment options and therapies for epilepsy and other movement disorders.
“My high school teacher opened our biology class by saying, ‘If you ever want to see a miracle, just look in the mirror.’ That really stuck with me.”
— Serena Ortiz
To future scientists
In the near future, Ortiz will continue her research in a doctoral program with Theanne Griffith, assistant professor of biology, who runs a lab at UC Davis and collaborates closely with the Wilkinson lab on this research. “Serena is a star,” says Griffith. “She has a passion and natural talent for science that is evident from the moment you speak with her. I feel very lucky to have had the opportunity to collaborate with her on prior studies, and I am thrilled she has chosen UC Davis and my lab to conduct her graduate work. I am excited to watch her grow as a scientist and support her on that journey.”
Ortiz’s ultimate dream, however, is to return to SJSU as a professor to run her own lab, teach and encourage a new crop of SJSU scientists the way her mentors have taught and encouraged her.
As Wilkinson’s lab manager, she’s already gotten a taste of mentorship, and she clearly takes great joy from it. “It's one of the most rewarding experiences, bringing in people who don't have a strong (or any) research background and seeing them grow from someone who’s very timid and scared to do any type of lab task into very independent scientists,” she explains. “It’s really amazing to see.”
She encourages others to follow in her footsteps, especially those from non-science backgrounds.
“You really just have to realize that you’re creating the path for all the people who come after you,” she says. “You can't just think about yourself, because once you get to the finish line, what you’ll be able to do (and what I hope to do) is reach your hand back and pull all the others up along with you, all the people who have gone through hard times or think that they’re not good enough students.”
After all, she remembers her own struggles over the years. “I always loved learning, especially about biology,” she states. “But I had so many things going on that my GPA never reflected that. I hope I can help people understand that your GPA is not a reflection of who you are as a person, or even as a student. As long as you're aware of that and you can keep pushing, even through the hard times, everything will be okay.”
She echoes something her other mentor, Alexander Payumo, assistant professor of biological sciences, once told her: “The field is looking for people like you. We need your intellectual merit to push the field forward in a way that it hasn’t been pushed before.”
She adds, “I come from a Hispanic background, and that really means a lot to me. I feel like I have been able to represent my community. And I hope it inspires other minority students.”
Ever modest: and at this point, it seems like a safe bet.
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Top photo: Jim Gensheimer.
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