Driven, Committed, Thorough

"Since starting my lab, I have been lucky to attract numerous outstanding students and postdocs and I would easily place Dr. Beatriz Nielsen at the top of this list. She has numerous qualities that make me nominate her for the Lab Heroes Awards 2024. First, she is highly driven and motivated for science. In terms of research, she has had a long-standing interest in the cholinergic system. Her PhD work in Argentina was focused on the biophysical properties of nicotinic acetylcholine receptors. After some delays due to COVID, she joined my lab at University of Colorado as a postdoc in fall of 2020. She immediately hit the ground running and, in addition to assisting in the completion of a previous work, she started her own postdoctoral project, which has examined how the loss of dopamine in Parkinsonian animals leads to deficits in cholinergic transmission within striatal circuits. This was a tour-de-force work involving several animal models of disease, brain slice electrophysiology, 2-photon imaging, behavioral tests and pharmacological/viral/circuit manipulations. This resulted in a single first author manuscript with only Beatriz and me as authors. From this it should be clear her level of commitment, effort and motivation. Beatriz thrives by being in the lab and is constantly doing experiments and analyzing data. Second, she is amazingly organized. As organization is not my strongest skill, I am constantly astounded at the organization of her data and projects. Third, she is not afraid to try new things. As results came in, Beatriz’s project moved into new directions for our lab. She was fearless in learning new approaches and was not concerned that she needed to pick up new skills in order to follow the data. Fourth, she is excellent at helping teach and assist others. Since Beatriz joined the lab, we have had several new members, and she is always willing to give advice and her time to help teach others. And finally, she is committed to foster a diverse environment, not only at our lab but also in the whole department, as a member of the DEI committee. Being an underrepresented minority Latina woman scientist, she has a strong desire to help others from different backgrounds succeed in science. Together, I have little doubt that Beatriz will easily be successful as an independent researcher and I again would like to give my utmost support for her to receive this Award."

Nominated by Christopher Ford, Chris Ford Lab / Department of Pharmacology, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, United States