A large scale study that included multi-ethnic participants has identified more genetic regions linked to type 2 diabetes-related traits than if the research had been conducted in Europeans alone.

The study, titled “The Trans-Ancestral Genomic Architecture of Glycemic Traits,” was published in Nature Genetics, and co-authored by Director of Clinical and Health Services Research at the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, Dr. Larissa Aviles-Santa, on behalf of the Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos (HCHS/SOL).

The Mayagüez Campus (RUM) of the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) became, once again, the Puerto Rican higher education institution with the largest number of scholarship recipients of the prestigious Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) that grants the National Science Foundation (NSF).

This year, the honor went to 11 schoolboys: Lee Roger Chevres Fernández, Ian González Amador, Christian José Lagares, José A. Lasalde Ramírez, Edgard Alvin Lebrón Rodríguez, Cristina Lorenzo Velázquez, Diego Rafael Ramos Ortiz, Daniela Marina Rivera Mirabal, Gabriel Sánchez Velázquez, Hosea Amos Santiago Cruz and Elizabeth Torres De Jesús, all students and graduates of the RUM.

Dr. Benjamín Colucci Ríos, professor of the Department of Civil Engineering and Surveying (INCI) of the Mayagüez Campus (RUM) of the University of Puerto Rico (UPR), became the first Puerto Rican and Hispanic-American to receive the Wilbur S. Smith, in the 2021 edition, an award granted by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).