Before an embryo has organs or recognizable features, its cells are already carrying out an extraordinary balancing act: multiplying while taking on different jobs. UC Irvine graduate student David Bojorquez is investigating how those processes work together. Now, two awards will support his efforts to understand how life takes shape.
Bojorquez, a member of the Lara-Gonzalez laboratory in the Charlie Dunlop School of Biological Sciences, received the Rose Hills Foundation Fellowship and the Achievement Rewards for College Scientists (ARCS) Foundation Scholarship. Both awards will support his research on how cells divide while developing the distinct identities they need to fulfill different roles in an embryo.
Making more cells is only part of the story of development. Those cells must also become organized into the tissues and structures that allow an organism to function. Bojorquez’s work examines the connection between producing new cells and determining what those cells will become. Understanding that relationship can help scientists piece together how the earliest stages of life unfold.
The Rose Hills Foundation Fellowship recognizes outstanding graduate students pursuing advanced degrees in the life sciences, natural sciences and engineering. The program emphasizes academic achievement and leadership potential, supporting the next generation of scientific and technical leaders.
The ARCS Foundation’s Orange County chapter provides direct financial support to promising graduate students at UC Irvine. Through contributions from individuals, foundations and businesses, the chapter gives community members a meaningful way to invest in future scientists and the questions they are working to answer.
For Bojorquez, these awards will help sustain research that builds knowledge from the ground up. Questions about how an embryo develops reach far beyond a single laboratory: they concern the biological processes that make life possible. Each new insight can give other scientists a stronger foundation for exploring development and health.
The awards also highlight the role of graduate students in moving science forward. While training for their future careers, they contribute to the effort to answer questions that remain unresolved. Supporting them helps sustain both today’s research and the expertise society will need in the years ahead.