Alberto Roca

Current

• Founder, Editor, and Diversity Consultant & Recruiter at minoritypostdoc.org

Past

• Director of Outreach, Recruitment, and Retention at University of California, Irvine
• Assistant Project Scientist at University of California, Irvine
• Postdoctoral Fellow at Rice University

• Postdoctoral Fellow at Institute Curie, Orsay, France

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1 more...

Education

• University of Wisconsin-Madison
• Trinity University
• Strake Jesuit High School

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Connections

184 connections

Industry

Higher Education

Websites

• My Website
• My bioinfo work
• My latest paper

Alberto Roca’s Experience

• Director of Outreach, Recruitment, and Retention

  University of California, Irvine

  (Educational Institution; Higher Education industry)

  2008 — 2008 (less than a year)

  Directs strategic planning, development, and implementation of recruitment and graduate student preparation and retention programs at UC-Irvine. Also, Director of the NSF-funded Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) program.

• Assistant Project Scientist

  University of California, Irvine

  (Educational Institution; Higher Education industry)

  September 2003 — December 2007 (4 years 4 months)

  RESEARCH: Structural analysis of recombination DNA repair proteins.
  Solved the crystal structure of the RecA protein showing a novel conformation of the carboxy terminus.
  Implementing open source crystallography software such as PyMOL, Coot, and the CCP4 suite.
  Visualized the RecA-DNA complex using Atomic Force Microscopy.
  
  RESEARCH: Bioinformatic analysis of recombination DNA repair proteins.
  Developed a unique Java program (JProfileGrid) for visualizing large multiple sequence alignments.
  Generated and curated the largest alignment of RecA bacterial homologs to date.
  Established a MySQL database of over 1400 RecA mutants for comparative analysis with alignments.
  Implementing open source bioinformatics software such as Clustal, muscle, and the EMBOSS suite.

• Postdoctoral Fellow

  Rice University

  (Educational Institution; Higher Education industry)

  1998 — 2003 (5 years )

  RESEARCH: Pre-steady-state kinetic analysis of recombinational DNA repair initiation
  Probing molecular interactions during RecA-DNA complex formation using stopped-flow spectrofluorometry of nonnatural DNA bases and fluorescent mutant proteins.
  Programming in DynaFit script language for global fitting analysis.

• Postdoctoral Fellow

  Institute Curie, Orsay, France

  (Educational Institution; Higher Education industry)

  1998 — 1998 (less than a year)

Alberto Roca’s Education

• University of Wisconsin-Madison

  Ph.D. , Molecular Biology , 1989 — 1998

• Trinity University

  B.S. , Biology , 1984 — 1988

• Strake Jesuit High School

  1980 — 1984

Additional Information

Alberto Roca’s Websites:

• My Website
• My bioinfo work
• My latest paper

Alberto Roca’s Interests:

Diversity issues among Ph.D. scholars in academia; Recruiting Ph.D. talent for leadership positions particularly in the STEM fields; My research: recombination proteins, structural biology, biochemistry, biophysics, bioinformatics.

Alberto Roca’s Groups:

SACNAS, AAAS, ASBMB, NPA

•    American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
•    Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology
•    Wisconsin Alumni Association
•    Trinity University Alumni
•    National Postdoctoral Association (NPA)
•    Computational Biology
•    Diversity - A World of Change
•    Diversity Recruiting Strategy Group
•    Bioinformatics geeks
•    SACNAS - Advancing Hispanics/Chicanos & Native Americans in Science
•    The Diversity and Inclusion Group
•    MentorNet
•    American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
•    Inside Higher Ed -- The New Conversation
•    University of California Council of Postdoctoral Scholars UC CPS
•    Biophysical Society
•    International Society for Biocuration
•    UCI Postdoctoral Association
•    ISCB - International Society for Computational Biology
•    SACNAS Leadership Institute
•    Minority Postdoc

Alberto Roca’s Honors:

University of California, Irvine Chancellor’s Living Our Values Award, 2007
http://today.uci.edu/Features/profile_detail.asp?key=288

Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS) Presidential Service Award, 2006

C.M. and Demaris Hudspeth Endowed Award for Student Life and Clubs, Rice Univ., club advisor award, 2001

Alberto Roca’s Contact Settings

Interested In:

• career opportunities
• consulting offers
• job inquiries
• expertise requests
• getting back in touch