Doctoral Candidate Amanda Carbajal was recently awarded a Yale Ciencia Academy for Career Development (YCA) fellowship.
This competitive fellowship selects recipiencts from a pool of nationwide applicants to participate in the year-long, hybrid program where they will join a diverse community of supportive peers and role models to develop career planning, mentoring, communication, and networking skills.
“Our goal is to complement traditional graduate training to help our fellows become the scientists they want to be. Our current cohort of fellows is impressive for their scientific accomplishments, as well as their leadership,” said Dr. Giovanna Guerrero-Medina, Principal Investigator of YCA.
"Being selected for the Yale Ciencia Program has provided me so much personally and professionally," said Carbajal who is working towards a doctoral degree in the Program in Biomedical Sciences and Engineering (PBSE)
Molecular, Cellular & Developmental Biology department.
"Not only are the struggles associated with my identities such as being a woman, a person of color, first gen and from a low socioeconomic status, accepted [in YCA]," she said, "but they are acknowledged and honored on top of the already long list of challenges associated with earning a STEM PhD."
The new cohort of Fellows participated in an all-expenses paid trip to Yale University on June 19-23, 2023, where they were joined by the 2022-23 cohort of YCA fellows to participate in workshops, community building, networking, and mentoring activities. Both incoming and outgoing fellows met to share experiences, expectations, and accomplishments while building their networks and developing their peer mentoring skills.
Over the upcoming year, fellows will gather monthly for online conversations and workshops to help them develop important career planning, mentoring, and scientific and interpersonal communication skills and products.
“The opportunity to bring together the incoming and outgoing YCA cohorts is very special. It is a chance for these young leaders to pass off the torch and impart wisdom, along with establishing a feeling of unity and a roadmap for the incoming group,” said Dr. Steven Paniagua, Research Associate for YCA.
Carbajal said, "I feel that I will be able to make the most out of this PhD, and in an informed way, thanks to the access I have to receive mentoring and encouragement from the folks running YCA and their networks, as well as my cohort of PhD scholars."
"Thanks to YCA, I feel empowered to cast a wider net for my next move after graduating with my PhD, with tools to prepare for interviews and ask the right questions," she said, stating that she is currently looking for postdoctoral opportunities in academia and industry settings.
The YCA program has trained eight cohorts since 2016 for a total of 244 young scientists from approximately 80 institutions across the United States and Puerto Rico. See the full class of 2023 YCA Fellows here.
