Liota Gongora Weinbaum

PhD
Biology
Summer 2024 Fellow | 2024-2025 AY Fellow

Liota is a doctoral candidate in Biology at the University of New Mexico (UNM). FLAS empowers her to learn Maya, her father’s first language. She was born on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico and grew up all over the continental USA before moving to New Mexico at age nineteen.

During her years of teaching experience in the UNM Biology department, her duties included writing quizzes for laboratory classes. She and another graduate student took the opportunity to make those assessments bilingual in Spanish. Some of Liota’s students’ scores doubled as soon as they began this practice. With FLAS, Liota is adding Maya translations, hoping to similarly engage wider student populations.

Liota’s own lived experiences linking human and animal health have inspired her to reduce the disease burden in animal agriculture. Her dissertation uses computer simulations to evaluate disease control efforts in global contexts, collaborating with researchers that span from molecular virology to public health. She aims to develop mathematical models of infectious disease outbreaks based on local community needs and assets in the Yucatan Peninsula. This effort would rely on the local ranching community. As her familiarity with the Maya language increases, she becomes more able to do disease surveillance fieldwork herself, reaching rural community members better than with Spanish and English alone. Building strong direct connections with the people who work with the animals is essential for systemic change.