Graduating Student Spotlight: Eliana Tijerina

Fall 2024 graduating neuroscience major Eliana Tijerina used her time in College Station to identify that her career path lay in scientific research and helping fellow students find their own paths. While in her last semester completing her degree, Eliana spent a significant amount of time mentoring incoming freshman in the Hullabaloo U class. She understood what they did not know about college coming in, because she remembered what knowledge she lacked when she first started, and she worked with students on everything from how to register for classes to how to act professionally in school and in research. Eliana also highlighted the research she performed as an undergraduate and was instrumental in helping new students find their own spots in labs.

Eliana worked on multiple different research projects both at Texas A&M, MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, and Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. In College Station, Eliana’s research focused how mitochondrial dysfunction advances Parkinson’s, a brain disorder that gets worse over time. At MD Anderson, Eliana further researched degenerative brain diseases, this time focusing on abnormal proteins that contribute Alzheimer’s disease. Eliana’s Baylor College of Medicine research focused on necrosis in context of myocardial ischemia. Eliana plans a future as a neuroscience researcher, and is interviewing at graduate programs for the fall of 2025.