I am a
Cell Biologist
Anthony Covarrubias, PhD
Presented by
Superhuman Body + IF/THENMY PATHHow I became a GARDENER, FAMILY MAN, and CELL BIOLOGIST.
Experiencing a Tough Childhood
SETTING GOALS FOR MYSELF
01 / I grew up in South LA in the 90s. I loved my community and it was filled with a lot of wonderful, hardworking people. It could also be violent and dangerous. My parents weren’t always around, and I often had to jump between houses of different family members, so I never really had much stability or direction. I had to figure things out on my own.
02 / There was a lot of good around me, too. I grew up with four sisters, and I was always into exploring. I loved plants and animals. I had two dogs, a rabbit, chickens, fish. For a while, I wanted to be a farmer or a vet.
03 / A lot of kids around me didn’t graduate high school, and very few graduated college. School was an escape for me. I did really well in my classes, and in my Junior year, my guidance counselor encouraged me to consider applying to top programs. She explained how scholarships and financial aid worked, so I realized it was possible even if I didn’t have much money or support. I had a lot of people rooting for me in my community, which made a big difference.
Discovering the Research Lab
PURSUING MY PASSIONS
01 / Towards the end of high school, my class was chosen to visit UCLA on a Saturday to check out a science lab through a program called CityLab. Seeing the experiments in action and talking to the students about their research was inspiring, and I decided I was going to do everything I could to join them.
02 / We didn’t have internet at home, so I had to do all of my applications and check my email at the public library. I found out I got into UCLA through a scholarship program, and that I wouldn’t have to pay any tuition. The program also came with special counseling to help me adjust to the transition, which turned out to be really important. UCLA was a totally new environment for me. At first, I thought all the other kids were way smarter than me. My first quarter was just about survival.
03 / I sought out support and eventually things got easier. I got really interested in biochemistry. I started out in a lab studying plants and then got involved with molecular biology and disease. I knew a lot of people in my community struggled with medical conditions like diabetes, and I wanted to find a way to help address inequality in public health, but I wasn’t sure exactly what that looked like.
Uncovering New Connections
CONSIDERING THE POSSIBILITIES
01 / After graduating college, I moved back to South LA to save money and started working in an immunology and cancer lab. I spent a year studying the role of inflammation in different diseases and was fascinated. The graduate students in the lab taught me a lot about what my next steps could look like, and I learned that most PhD students go to graduate school for free and usually get paid a stipend. It made it seem more possible for me.
02 / My experience in research labs set me up to be competitive for top PhD programs. Science can be very competitive, and sometimes graduate school is all about finding the right fit for your skills and interests. I got into a really unique program at Harvard that felt like it was made for me. It was focused on both public health and molecular biology, so it was a chance to bring together all of my interests.
03 / Graduate school was tough. I was worried at first that I was in over my head again. I was getting by, but for the first couple of years, I felt like I wasn’t flourishing. It wasn’t until I started digging into my PhD project that things started to click. We made some major breakthroughs, and I got the opportunity to be the “first author” on a research paper, which basically meant that I led a project of my own and wrote an academic article about the results that was published in the field. It was a big deal and opened a lot of doors.
Coming Full Circle
BACK TO LA WITH A NEW PERSPECTIVE
01 / After earning my PhD, I moved to San Francisco for a post-doc, which is additional training that many academic scientists take on after graduate school. It’s usually a way to expand your skills, and my position was at UCSF where I started out continuing to study inflammation and metabolism.
02 / In the middle of my work there, my mentor got recruited to a new company that focused on aging, so I had to shift my focus. At first, I was disappointed by the change, but as I started to dive in, I realized that a lot of my prior work studying our immune system fit in really well. It actually seemed to fill gaps in the research, and I realized I might be able to bring a lot to the field.
03 / I got really excited about the complexity of aging, and the role that our immune systems play in age-related diseases. I realized this is a path that could help a lot of people, which is really important to me in my research. After completing my post-doc and applying to jobs, my story landed right back where it started – back on UCLA campus, inspired by the possibilities. Only now, I’m leading a research team of my own.
MAJOR INFLUENCES
My life has always been about figuring out the next best step.
I always wanted to become a scientist, but I never knew what that path looked like. And so I did it just one step at a time. My focus was on figuring out what I needed to do in each immediate moment, so that I could get to the next step after that. I feel lucky to have met mentors that could help me figure out what I needed along the way, but it was always one step at a time.
Major Milestones
CityLab Visit
UCLA students toured my high school classmates and me around their lab. I’d never seen anything like it, and it motivated me to follow in their footsteps.
UCLA Scholarship
When I was young, I thought the only way to afford college was a sports scholarship. When I learned about academic scholarships, it changed the game. And UCLA gave me a full ride.
Harvard PhD
I got into a unique interdisciplinary program at Harvard that tied together my interests in molecular biology and the diseases that impact public health. It seemed tailor made for me.
Becoming Faculty at UCLA
When I started as an Assistant Professor at UCLA, it felt like my story came full circle. Now I get to be the one inspiring kids to imagine a future for themselves in science.
Things I learned
along the way:
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