Christian Torres earned his undergraduate degree in Biology with a minor in Mathematical Modeling from Northeastern Illinois University. As a MARC and McNair scholar and as a Society for Developmental Biology Choose Development! fellow, he studied a downstream effector of p53 called PIG11 and its role in neural crest cells during early zebrafish development, with guidance from Dr. Jorge Cantú. During his time as PREP@UCD scholar, he investigated two topics: the intricacies of mRNA processing from a temporal perspective using yeast as a model system, and characterizing the spatiotemporal expression of genes encoding alpha and beta-tubulin isoforms during vertebrate embryonic development. Christian hopes to pursue a PhD in developmental biology.