San Diego State University cell biologist Angelica Riestra has been researching trichomoniasis since her days as a graduate student at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Since then, she's been awarded a $500,000 grant from the Prebys Foundation to study one of the world's most common sexually transmitted infections and the parasite that causes it.
Trichomoniasis is associated with several severe health conditions and disparities, including an increased risk of contracting and transmitting HIV.
The philanthropic support from the Prebys Foundation represents "a critical award as an early-stage investigator," Riestra tells the San Diego Union-Tribune.
"It'll give us an ability to really catalyze the projects that we have going and bring them to fruition with publications and more grant applications."
The Prebys Research Heroes grant is intended to support research opportunities for women and underrepresented groups.
Riestra started at SDSU as a guest lecturer during her postdoctoral training in the NIH/NIGMS-funded University of California San Diego IRACDA program.
She joined the faculty in 2020, setting up her lab on the top floor of the Shiley BioScience Center just as the COVID-19 pandemic forced an upheaval in normal campus operations.Assembling the equipment she needed and recruiting students to work in the lab,
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