A good place to live and to study cancer

After completing my postdoctoral training at the University of California, San Diego, I received an attractive offer to work in San Antonio. I am now an associate professor in the molecular medicine department at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.

Dynamic control of enhancer repertoires drives stage-specific transcription during tissue development and disease progression. My lab’s overall objective is to gain a fundamental understanding of the regulations of enhancer dynamics in response to signaling and their effects on gene regulation, leading to innovative approaches to prevent and treat enhancer-related diseases, especially cancers.

I wanted to work in this city for several reasons. First, Texas offers substantial start-up funding for researchers across various disciplines to study cancer. As a new PI who recently concluded postdoctoral training and was recruited as a tenure-track faculty member, I received a $2 million start-up grant from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, known as CPRIT. Also, San Antonio is a military city and many people choose to stay after retiring. This ensures abundant clinical resources for researching aging and cancer.

San Antonio also has historical significance and is a vibrant tourist destination, with attractions such as the River Walk and the Alamo. As the seventh-largest city in the U.S., San Antonio offers the advantages of a major urban center while providing a high quality of life due to its affordability and favorable traffic conditions.

My wife is also a PI, researching neuronal diseases. She and I have been immensely content working and living in San Antonio since we moved here from San Diego. Our two young daughters find a lot of fun things to do in this city. Besides working hard in the lab, we often take our daughters out to eat good food, visit the attractions and play at the SeaWorld or Six Flags amusement parks on weekends.