OUR UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCHERS participate in all aspects of scientific exploration, from the formation of research questions to the presentation and publication of new research studies. Along the way, they learn from their successes, and they learn to appreciate their failures. Exposed to the culture of the scientific community, many students find themselves irresistibly drawn to the profession. 

Our Annual PRISM Undergraduate Research Symposium is a celebration of this year’s student researchers and the work that they have accomplished over the past academic year. 

Keynote Speaker: Stephania Guzmán Diaz, PhD (John Jay Class of ‘15) 

Dr. Stephania Guzmán Diaz was a PRISM undergraduate researcher from 2013 to 2015. Under the mentorship of Dr. Nathan Lents, she studied the collection of microbes that live on human skin, known as the skin microbiota, and how their composition changes over time after death. Named the necrobiome (derived from the Greek “necro-” meaning “death” and “biome” referring to a community of living organisms) their work provided a new way to determine the time of death of a deceased. 

Dr. Guzmán Diaz graduated in 2015 with a bachelor’s degree in forensic science (molecular and cellular biology) with Cum Laude honors and was part of John Jay College’s Honors Program. She then worked at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center on melanoma clinical trials. In 2017, she began her doctoral studies at Rutgers University, focusing on a neuropeptide receptor involved in fatty liver disease, under Dr. Moshmi Bhattacharya. She defended her dissertation in 2022. 

Afterward, she joined Eli Lilly’s Leadership Development Program and is now a Clinical Development Trial Lead for a Phase III Type II Diabetes Study. At the Symposium, she discussed her career journey, emphasizing how John Jay equipped her for graduate school and her post-graduate path.