Felipe Méndez-Salcido, MD, a postdoctoral fellow in the Hanks Laboratory at the Center for Neurosciences (CNS) and the Conte Center at UC Davis, has been named a Pew Latin America Biomedical Sciences Fellow for 2024. Dr. Méndez-Salcido is one of 10 postdoctoral fellows selected from across Latin America to receive two-year research funding. The Fellows Program has supported more than 200 young scientists across Latin America, including postdoctoral fellows from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela.
“The Pew Latin America Fellows award is a tremendous honor and a very well-deserved award,” said Kimberly McAllister, director of the Neuroscience Center, co-director of the UC Davis Conte Center and a 2001 Pew Biomedical Scholar. “Felipe is trained in translational research and has deep expertise in psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders. We are thrilled to have him join the UC Davis Conte Center team.”
Felipe Mendez Salcido
Pew Research Center’s Latin American Fellows Program in Biomedical Sciences provides two years of funding to promising Latin American scientists to conduct research at leading laboratories in the U.S. Scientists who complete the fellowship receive additional support to establish their own laboratories upon returning to their home countries, fostering scientific advancement and collaboration in Latin America.
“Being selected as a Pew Latin America Fellow is a great honor and I am grateful for this incredible opportunity,” said Dr. Méndez-Salcido. “Pew’s funding will enable me to further my research, achieve more at UC Davis, and fulfill my dream of starting my own lab in Mexico after I complete my postdoctoral training.”
A brilliant scientist with a unique vision
Originally from the state of Chihuahua, Mexico, Dr. Méndez Salcido attended medical school at the Autonomous University of Chihuahua and later decided to pursue a career as a researcher, earning a Master’s degree in Neuropharmacology from the IPN Center for Advanced Research (CINVESTAV) and eventually a Ph.D. at the Institute of Neurobiology of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).
In June 2023, Dr. Mendez-Salcido moved to California to work in collaboration with the Hanks lab and the UC Davis Conte Center Project 2, focusing on offspring phenotypic heterogeneity arising from underlying neural mechanisms involved in maternal immune activation and dopamine signaling.
“Felipe is a brilliant scientist with a versatile approach to research across a wide range of scales, from molecular mechanisms to behavioral phenotypes,” said Tim Hanks, PhD, associate professor of neurology in the School of Medicine and core faculty member in CNS. “He has a unique vision that he is bringing to my lab and the Conte Center project, which will have a profound positive impact. The Pew Fellowship will make this impact even more far-reaching.”
Dr. Méndez-Salcido’s long-term research goal is to better understand the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders, such as autism spectrum disorder and schizophrenia. He aims to identify new therapeutic targets and strategies that will reveal insights into disease mechanisms.
