Castaneda 2017
Daniel Castaneda Mogollon Chosen as the College of Science Graduate Graduate Marshall of Students for Fall 2017 Commencement.
Daniel was chosen as the College of Science Graduate Marshall of Students because of his extraordinary academic achievement while at UTEP.
He was born and raised in Colima, Mexico and came to El Paso, Texas in 2015 to pursue a master’s degree in Bioinformatics. He chose the program offered at UTEP among the many other bioinformatics programs in the US because of its interdisciplinary nature. He has been very impressed with the mission of UTEP where faculty go out of their way to help undergraduate and graduate students succeed.
Daniel has always been interested in science and while attending high school in Mexico he focused on his chemistry and biology classes. His bachelor’s degree from the Instituto Tecnologico de Estudios Superiores de Occidente (ITESO) blended these two subjects for a degree in Food Processing Engineering.
He has submitted an article to Nature entitled “Deconvoluting the expression dynamics of m6A post-transcriptional enzymes and their crosstalk with RNA binding proteins” , where he is the first author.
Daniel interned at IUPUI (Indiana University – Pursue University at Indianapolis) where he worked with post transcriptional enzymes that impact RNA and affect cancer development in several tissues.
Daniel plans to pursue a doctorate in molecular research from a bioinformatics view. He has been accepted at elite universities in Canada, England, British Columbia, and the US.
While at UTEP he was the Vice President and currently the President of the BioinTx Club where the members illustrate software used in research across UTEP and bring in students from other graduate disciplines to talk about their research.
He credit two faculty members with his success: Dr. Ming-Ying Leung and Dr. Chuan Xiao. Dr. Leung for her creative leadership in the program, and Dr. Chuan for his challenging Socratic method of teaching.
When not immersed in research, Daniel likes to attend movies, play racket ball with his friends, read, travel and cook (he was a chef in at one time).
Daniel is representing UTEP as the Graduate Marshall of Students as a shining example of the type of students in the College of Science.