Meet this week's Grad Chat guest, Kiera Sofia Vega Bellido!
To whom it may concern,
It’s my anxiety-riddled pleasure and privilege to get to write at all of you by way of this social media platform and introduce myself as a virtual colleague with whom I wish you to feel comfortable speaking about anything you think is interesting. However, I have brought with me some topics to talk about that I hope you’ll engage with since I am very curious to read what you all think and am sure we can learn a thing or two about each other.
My name is Kiara Sofia Vega Bellido (she/her), born and raised in a small town called Mayaguez, in the beautiful and chaotic Island of Puerto Rico where I have met all of the loves of my life: words, neuroscience, music, and some mathematician-musician guy everybody likes to call Willy. I’m currently a Neuro PhD student at Baylor College of Medicine studying the neuroplasticity underlying contextual fear memory in the Schaffer collateral synapse. I’m also queer and I have struggled with severe mood disorders since I was 16. At first, the diagnosis was Major Depressive Disorder, around 2014 it was compounded by substance abuse disorder, and by 2019 it had evolved into Bipolar II. I’m also an ex-nihilist, a therapy veteran, and mother to the world’s most adorable rat, Cofi. Today I’ll be whipping out those aforementioned topics during my Instagram takeover so stay tuned and feel free to follow my Twitter (@kiara_bellido) if you would like.
Kiara will be taking over our Instagram account today!