Crystal was born and raised in Puerto Rico and recently defended her PhD thesis in the lab of Dr. Carol Troy at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. She conducted studies on understanding the role of caspases in a model of retinal vascular injury. During her graduate trajectory, she was awarded with NSF-Graduate Research Fellowship Program, the Association for the American Advancement of Science (AAAS) Program for Excellence in Science, the Society for Neuroscience (SfN) Trainee Professional Development Award, and the NIH Blueprint Diversity Specialized Predoctoral to Postdoctoral Advancement in Neuroscience (D-SPAN) Award. Crystal will join Dr. Cagla Eroglu’s lab at Duke University to continue her studies as postdoctoral researcher on the retina-brain connection and neuroimmune interactions.