Students
Past Students
This student is Miroslava Garza but goes by Miritos. She is now in her 3rd year of optometry school in Boston. She obtained travel awards to go to SACNAS and her research was supported by the C-STEM under the NSF-LSMAP grant. Miritos did excellent work representing the lab in several local, state, and national conferences. She is also the main author of a paper that was published in a top journal called PLoS Neglected Tropical diseases (cover page shown below). Our work was featured in USA Today and on local ABC/NBC TV affiliates Channels 5 and 23, respectively. A picture of both of us working in the lab has been used as an advertisement for the C-STEM and programs such as HHMI at UTRGV.
This student is Mayra Oyervides. She loves herpetology! I met Mayra in 2013 as an undergraduate student and since then my admiration and respect for her great commitment to developing research has been growing and growing. She attended my classes as both an undergraduate and graduate student. I have had the opportunity to work with Mayra on different research ideas, most of which Mayra has originated. I have also had the opportunity to have her as a teaching assistant, staff member of an international project funded by the National Commission for the use and Knowledge of biodiversity (CONABIO) in Mexico, and as a GIS expert consultant in a project funded by the American Bird Conservancy through the Rio Grande Joint Venture.
My name is AnaLau Cavazos and I was Dr. Feria’s student and mentee. I met her in 2011 and was fortunate enough to work in 3 research projects with her. The first being Chagas disease, where I helped collect specimens, create ecological maps and learned how to perform molecular analysis on vectors to analyze potential distribution of disease in the Lower Rio Grande Valley. The second project was assessing the risk of Lyme disease due to climate change distribution of vector tick Ixodes scapularis. While collaborating with other universities we published our finding for this research in the journal Parasite & Vectors. Lastly, we worked together with Mexico’s Comisión Nacional para el Conocimiento y Uso de la Biodiversidad (CONABIO) and created ecological maps for 22 endemic hummingbird species using statistical programs SPSS to analyze real and potential distribution of species. With Dr. Feria’s collaboration and help, I was able to present 4 posters in various conferences like Texas Academy of Science, Ecological Society of America and UTPA’s Annual Undergraduate Research conference. She was also my professor for the following classes: Global Change Ecology, Biology Problems and Ecology.
Edgar Casillas.
Ricardo Garcia.
Romeo Garcia.
Simon, Brenda, Ana and Cynthia.
Hilda Castillo.
Audrey Rachelle Ochoa.
Cynthia I. Garcia.
During my undergraduate and graduate career I took Ecology, Biology Research Problems, Advanced Global Change Ecology, Advanced Ecology, and Study in Special Topics with Dr. Feria. For my graduate studies I chose her as the chair for my graduate committee where she helped me throughout my thesis project studding the effects of global climate change on the invasive grass Kleberg Bluestem. After this Dr. Feria was instrumental in helping me find a position with the USDA where I worked as a cooperator for 3 years and now as a federal employee as a Cartographer for 2 years.
Marcelo Pintos.
I was first introduced to Dr. Feria’s lab when I joined the High Scholars Program. This summer program was a research initiative for high school upper-class students to engage in hands-on science projects and to learn to present their scientific results. At the beginning, I was not sure if entering the program because I wanted to work during the summer. However, I decided to give it a try because science was a topic I felt passionate about but I never knew how research was done. Deciding to join and do Chagas Disease research with Dr. Feria was the best decision I could’ve made. I learned to do complicated molecular procedures along with writing research proposals and lab poster presentations. At the end of the program, I won first place in the Biology discipline and 1st place in the overall competition. This experience gave me the insight of the tireless work researchers have to do for the sake of their projects. A passion for research and science rose in me and since then I have continued to work with research projects.
Texas Academy of Science Meeting, Austin, 2011. From left to right, Simon Del Alto, Audrey Ochoa, Ana Cavazos and her sister, Dr. McDonald from UTRGV Biology, Brenda Garcia, Romeo Garcia, Cynthia Garcia, Edgar Casillas and Teresa Patricia Feria.