Affiliation: University of South Florida, Department of Molecular Medicine; USF Health Neuroscience Institute, Byrd Alzheimer’s Center

Caroline Peña Martínez is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of South Florida. She received her Master’s Degree in Neuroscience from the Complutense University of Madrid in 2015. As a Master’s student, she collaborated with the Neurovascular Research Unit at the School of Medicine in the Complutense University of Madrid, focusing on developing and improving the different tests to assess neurological function in rodents after brain disease. After graduating, she joined the Neurovascular Research Unit as a PhD candidate under Dr. Maria Angeles Moro and Dr. Ignacio Lizasoain. During her PhD, her research was focused on studying the role of neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs) in the context of stroke focused on the elucidation of the role of neutrophil and platelet TLR4 in thrombosis. Also, she explored how different thrombi components would affect the response to stroke treatment. To expand her knowledge on platelet function, in 2018, she was a visiting scientist at the ACBD, Monash University in Melbourne (Australia) under the supervision of Dr. Justin Hamilton. She received her Ph.D. in October 2020. In 2021 she joined The Heckmann´s Lab as a Postdoctoral Researcher, where she continues exploring the role of immune cells in the autophagy machinery in the context of brain disease.