Bio
Madza Farias-Virgens, Ph.D., is an experimental and computational biologist with a PhD in Physiology from UCLA and postdoctoral training in the Biology Department at University of Washington. Over the past decade she has led comparative omics projects that illuminate how brains function and evolve. Her work has been supported by the National Science Foundation and received top recognition from the Society for Neuroscience and the International Society for Neuroethology, with findings published in peer reviewed journals including Communications Biology and BMC Neuroscience. Beyond research, Dr. Farias-Virgens is committed to teaching and mentorship. She has taught widely across the biological sciences as a teaching assistant at UCLA and UC Berkeley and as a lecturer at San Francisco State University, and has mentored a diverse cohort of students who have gone on to pursue successful professional paths, furthering their studies in competitive post-bachelor and graduate programs.
