Affiliation: University of Michigan

Erick considers himself an Evo-Devo-Cell biologist with a deep interest in microscopy, nature, and art. He completed his B.S. at the University of Puerto Rico-Humacao campus. He then went to the University of Chicago and earned his PhD in integrative biology. During his PhD, he studied the developmental mechanisms underlying butterfly color patterning and pigmentation in the lab of Dr. Marcus Kronforst. In addition to pigmentation, he also developed tools to investigate butterfly embryogenesis more widely. After completing his PhD, Erick joined the lab of Dr. Patricia Wittkopp after being awarded an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology. As a postdoctoral researcher in the Wittkopp lab, Erick has been working across different stages of Drosophila development, investigating questions regarding expression dynamics, patterning, and morphogenesis within and outside pigmentation phenotypes. More specifically, his work provides insight into the spatiotemporal basis of structural gene expression and how such qualities build pigmentation phenotypes during development.