Horacio Martín Pallarés, a PhD student at the Leloir Institute Foundation in Argentina, will arrive at the Stowers Institute in July after being named a 2022 PROLAB winner.

In total, ten early-career scientists received grants this year from the Promoting Research Opportunities for Latin American Biochemists program, which will allow them to advance their research by working in the labs of collaborators abroad.

While at the Institute he plans to use ribosome profiling and RNA sequencing to study how Zika virus regulates host gene expression in the lab of Ariel Bazzini, PhD.

“The PROLAB travel award is an invaluable opportunity for me. It will be crucial for my thesis project, and it will allow me to acquire new skills in techniques that are poorly developed in Argentina,” Pallarés said.

“We are thrilled Horacio won this award and he is well deserving. He’s coming from one of the best labs in Argentina working on viral infections, and we can’t wait to see what he does here at Stowers,” Bazzini said.

Pallarés currently studies the mechanisms of Zika virus replication and viral immune system evasion processes.

The Zika virus belongs to the Flaviviridae family, which includes a large number of emerging and re-emerging human pathogens that cause fever and encephalitis, such as West Nile virus, Japanese encephalitis virus and dengue virus. A Zika outbreak in the Americas and its suspected link to microcephaly put this virus at the forefront of an international research effort to understand its replication strategies and pathogenesis.

Since 2012, the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, the Pan-American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and the International Union for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology have given 93 biochemists these travel awards. The program supports travel and other expenses related to temporarily relocating to the U.S., Canada and Spain.

This year’s PROLAB travel grants are going to PhD students and postdoctoral fellows from Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay.

To see the full list of winners click here.