Maria-Paz Ramos is June’s “F1000 Specialist of the Month”. She obtained her PhD in Biomedical Sciences at Einstein in NYC, working on stem cells and epigenetic transcriptional regulation. After living in the US for 8 years, she went back to Chile in order to contribute to the science progression in her country.
F1000 Specialists are PhD students, postdocs, clinicians and researchers who help their colleagues use F1000Prime, F1000Workspace and F1000Research, and spread the word about F1000 within their institutes. If you’d like to become an F1000 Specialist yourself, you can sign up here.
What are some things you have done as F1000 Specialist?
In Chile, F1000 has a strong reputation, especially F1000Prime, which helps scientists to stay up to date on important literature in their field. However, the new products like F1000Workspace are unfamiliar to most of the investigators I am in contact with. Therefore, I’ve been talking to several researchers in different labs and departments to let them know of this super strong tool that allows an efficient collaboration. The feature I like most is how F1000Workspace is capable of suggesting references that you may have no clue existed, which makes the writing so much faster and productive.
Do you have any tips or advice for young scientists?
Train yourself in a successful environment, with access to gold standard techniques, but especially surround yourself with great people. At the end of the day, you can learn just as much from good advice as a good result, and you can be more productive when feeling the support of your lab mates, within the lab but also your life.
Finally, can you tell us a little bit about your work?
I’m currently working with Mesenchymal Stem Cells (MSC) for the development of novel therapies to treat different diseases. In particular, I’m leading the Diabetes group, in which we work on the use of MSC derived from menstrual fluid (MenSC), reduce the daily amount of insulin needed in insulin-dependent patients. Our long-term goal is to eventually replace insulin injections with the infiltration of MenSC. The advantage of these cells is that it is a disposable, non-invasive way to treat several diseases efficiently while reducing cost at the same time.
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