Acuña-González, Ella Raquel

PhD. Ella Raquel Acuña González was born in Puebla on October 4, 1988. She studied primary school at the American School of Puebla, and secondary and high school at the "Instituto Oriente de Puebla" obtaining the best average of her generation (100/100) which allowed her to obtain the 90% scholarship to study at the ITESM Campus Puebla. She moved to the Monterrey Campus in 2008 and graduated in May 2013 with a degree in biotechnology engineering with the best final score of her generation (94.9/100); during that period she specialized in molecular biology and music. This combination of scientific and artistic skills helped her to have a broader perspective on how to face work challenges. After graduation, she worked for the "FEMSA Biotechnology Center" on several bioprocess research projects highlighting biomass production in bioreactors, bioremediation, and the purification of compounds of interest from plants. She entered the PhD program in Biotechnology in August 2014 and completed a doctoral stay from March to August 2018 at the University of Houston where she learned meta-sequencing techniques, molecular identification, and phylogenetic tree construction. She graduated in December 2018 with the defense of her thesis entitled: "Effects of Sound on Growth, Viability, Protein Production Yield and Gene Expression in Escherichia coli.", where she coined the term "molecular bioacoustics" to describe the cutting-edge research in which she specializes. Between 2019 and 2022, she served as a project specialist in the Bioprocesses focus group where, in addition to coordinating the laboratory, the most relevant project consisted of the production and recovery of glycosylated carotenoids in collaboration with a chemical company; she also taught the bioengineering design project class in both old and new plans and the computational biology analysis subject in the Tec21 plans. She was part of the National System of Researchers at the Candidate level between 2020 and 2022, during this period she dedicated part of her activities to the dissemination of science through local, national and international postdoctoral seminars. Due to the forced isolation caused by the pandemic, she dealt with some personal issues that life's distractions did not allow her to pay attention to and in January 2021 she accepted being part of the LGBTQ+ community. Since then, she has focused more on visibility and education with a neurodivergent approach on various topics including science (sustainability), arts (music) and philosophy (non-binary gender) through her venture called "El Laboratorio de Reichel". In addition to teaching, she is also a semi-professional drummer and actress.