The Ragon Institute of Mass General Brigham, MIT, and Harvard is pleased to announce Jennie Ruelas Castillo, PhD, and Jonathan Padilla Gómez, PhD, as the inaugural recipients of the FEMSA Fellowship at the Ragon Institute. The fellowship supports postdoctoral researchers from Mexico in pursuing immunology research at the Ragon in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The FEMSA Fellowship is part of a broader partnership between the Ragon Institute and Tecnológico de Monterrey, one of the leading universities in Latin America, aimed at strengthening research ties between Mexico and the United States by building human capacity in health, science, and technology. The fellowship provides stipend support for postdoctoral researchers who completed their graduate training at research institutions in Mexico, giving them access to the Ragon’s interdisciplinary research environment and state-of-the-art facilities. The program is supported by FEMSA, a leading company in Latin America with operations across 18 countries.

Ruelas Castillo, who earned her PhD from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, is a postdoctoral fellow in the Barczak Lab at the Ragon Institute. Her research focuses on tuberculosis (TB), one of the leading causes of death from a single infectious agent worldwide. At Johns Hopkins, she studied host-directed therapies for drug-resistant TB and contributed to work on novel drug regimens and immune-based treatment strategies. At the Ragon, she investigates how pathologic tissue remodeling occurs during and after TB infection, working within a lab that combines microbiology, immunology, and clinical approaches to TB research.

Padilla Gómez, who earned his PhD in biomedical sciences from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), is a postdoctoral associate in the Bryson Lab at the Ragon Institute. His research background spans microbiology, lipid biochemistry, and structural biology. At the Ragon, he studies how Mycobacterium tuberculosis persists within human immune cells, contributing to the Bryson Lab’s efforts to develop new strategies for controlling TB through a deeper understanding of host-pathogen interactions.

The FEMSA Fellowship is part of a growing portfolio of international fellowship programs at the Ragon Institute, reflecting the institute’s commitment to training the next generation of scientists from around the world.