Born in Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico—the daughter of a biologist, agronomist, and dentist & an activist, environmentalist, and humanitarian—Tatiana was inspired to love and study life, literally.

Tatiana studied Biology, focusing on Botany at the University of Puerto Rico. She conducted graduate studies at Rutgers University and ran her doctoral thesis research project in Rio de Janeiro. In Rio, she met her now-husband of 10 years, a musician and composer. They moved to NY, where Tatiana completed her postdoc and lived in the city for over 7 years. Now they live in Santa Monica with their plants and guitars.

She holds a Ph.D. in human nutrition and a postdoc in human body composition focused on the period of pregnancy and in utero and early life body composition under the mentorship of Dr. Dympna Gallagher and Dr. F. Xavier Pi-Sunyer from the New York Obesity Nutrition Research Center at Columbia University.

On not-so-scientific time, Tatiana is passionate about turrón de coco, Luis Alberto Spinetta, Hugo Ball, frogs, ferns, mosses, liverworts, lichens, and skateboarding.

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In conversation with Tatiana:

Six word story of your life.
Paid careful attention to subtle modulations.

What was your first brush with science?
My father’s agronomy stories and my subsequent scientific fair projects on Musaceae and Meloidogyne spp. (root knot nematodes) & my mom’s stories about Bilharzia in the freshwater snails and rivers of Puerto Rico.

Why do you think bacteria are important?
They are the foundation of everything. Shout out to them for the inheritance of mitochondria!

How do you define science?
The process by which we explore that which we do not understand through observation, questioning, and experimentation to find the answers we seek (or don’t seek).

How do you define health?
Homeostasis through planned preservation of the self or the other. The ability to enjoy life with as few physical and mental limitations as possible or despite them.

What are you currently reading / listening / watching?
Missing Microbes: How the Overuse of Antibiotics Is Fueling Our Modern Plagues by Martin J. Blaser
Dada: Art and Anti-Art by Hans Richter

Favorite microbiome-nurturing food?
Nuts, seeds, and their butters.

Scientist, dead or alive, you’d like to eat with?
Elsie Widdowson, the mother of the chemical analysis of body composition (alongside McCance), together, the parents of modern nutrition.

Microbiome perturbation you’re trying to give up.
None.

Favorite science joke or best mindgasm fact?
Odontodactylus scyllarus. That’s it. Quite amazing eyesight.

One fact most people don’t know about you:
I’m a master trainer of newborn anthropometry.