Dennis Montoya, UCLA

Originally from Los Angeles, I first attended UC Berkeley for undergraduate. I first discovered research as an undergraduate researcher in Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory studying atherosclerosis. I subsequently attended a summer research program at Columbia University researching the Kaposi's sarcoma virus. Having done enough research, I studied abroad in Spain for my last semester. I first came to UCLA to help support my parents and get additional experience as a lab technician in the Clinical Immunology Research Laboratory working on the Natural History of AIDS project, then as a technician in Dr. Volker Hartenstein's laboratory studying Developmental Neurobiology.

I entered the UCLA graduate program through ACCESS and after my first year I join Dr. Robert Modlin's laboratory in the MIMG department and was awarded the NSF Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation Research Fellowship. Throughout my career, I've received support from minority programs and so I created the Scientific Excellence through Diversity Seminar Series to help change the culture of academia to encourage diversity. I hope to continue in academia and attain a postdoctoral position next, and perhaps an academic faculty position in the future.

Research:

Coordinate uptake of mycobacteria and oxLDL by IL-10 derived human macrophages

Infectious disease poses a major health problem worldwide. Essential to control of these diseases is the elucidation of immune mechanisms that result in resistance versus susceptibility to infection. Using leprosy as a model, I am attempting to understand the differentiation of macrophages in response to a mycobacterial infection.