Affiliation: Hope College

Dr. Erika Calvo-Ochoa is an Assistant Professor of Biology and Neuroscience at Hope College. Her lab investigates mechanisms of plasticity, repair, and regeneration in the zebrafish brain following injury and disease. One of her current projects explores the role of neuroinflammation in CNS repair and functional recovery following excitotoxicity and acute brain trauma. Dr. Calvo-Ochoa received both her B.Sc. in Biomedical Research and PhD in Neuroscience at Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico where she studied the effects of high-fat-and-sugar diets on plasticity and neuroinflammatory markers in the hippocampus. Dr. Calvo-Ochoa held a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellowship and an IBRO-RIKEN CBS fellowship to pursue her postdoctoral research at Western Michigan University and RIKEN Center for Brain Science where she characterized neurodegeneration and regeneration mechanisms in the olfactory system of zebrafish following lesions of the olfactory bulb. Dr. Calvo-Ochoa focuses her work on zebrafish to get a better understanding of repair mechanisms that can potentially inform strategies for repairing brain lesions in humans.