Natalia Zubieta-DeUrioste
Graduate student - PhD
Contact information
Biography
About me
My name is Natalia, and I am a highlander from Bolivia, in the heart of South America. I have experience in the medical, physiological, epidemiological, cultural, and project management fields in the Andes. Nevertheless, I am interested in the holistic approach of health and disease. Although I completed my General Medicine Degree in Bolivia and worked as a clinician, researcher and project manager at the High Altitude Pulmonary and Pathology Institute in La Paz for over a decade, I previously enrolled in psychology for a year, and I desired to continue improving myself by acquiring animal research experience, mastering my English scientific and proposal writing, and ameliorating my entrepreneurial skills. The BRAIN CREATE program at the UofC represented the miraculous opportunity to concile all of my interests. It provided the open-mindness, the mountains, the people, the resources, the medicine, the science, and an insight into the biomedical business field that I was yearning for. So when the opportunity arose, I expedited my flight into Calgary to enroll in a Neuroscience PhD.
My research
I work under the supervision of Prof. Richard Wilson, part of the Hotchkiss Brain Institute (HBI), and an expert in the neuronal control of respiration. Since his lab recently found the role of the carotid bodies during an asthma attack in rats, he introduced me to the delightful study of the neuronal mechanisms in asthma. As many as 20 million people in North America may suffer from sleep apnea. Asthmatics are at increased risk of developing sleep apnea, and untreated sleep apnea increases the risk of cardiovascular disease. My project currently focuses on the central respiratory responses and sleep apnea in asthma under normoxic (normal oxygen levels) and hypoxic (low oxygen levels) conditions, simulating different altitudes. According to the literature, sleep apnea increases upon ascent to high altitude but may normalize over time, yet the asthmatic prevalence decreases in the highlands. Studying these diseases under simulated chronic hypoxic conditions can provide meaningful insights into the mechanisms that need to be targeted for their effective treatments.
BRAIN CREATE program aspirations
The BRAIN CREATE program is allowing me to combine my scientific and entrepreneurial interests by providing me access to multiple workshops, resources, and networking opportunities, and the possibility to carry out and participate in expeditions to high altitude.
Commercialization
Living, studying and working at high altitude has provided me with an optimistic perspective of how different cardio-respiratory diseases can be managed with special gas delivering devices. I pretend to combine my experience with research that proposes novel approaches for the treatment of highly prevalent respiratory diseases such as asthma and sleep apnea.