Please join us in congratulating CCMB postdoc Diana Rigueur, who was elected to a three-year term on the American Association of Anatomists (AAA) Board of Directors. The 2,100 members of the AAA voted in February to elect five new Directors, who will be officially installed at the AAA Annual Meeting in Orlando in April. At the same time, members of the scientific society voted to change the organization’s name to the American Association for Anatomy in order to better reflect the differing professions of its membership. Rigueur will be one of only two student/postdoc board members.
“I want to give back to the scientific community that nurtured my abilities,” says Rigueur. She first got involved with the AAA while attending the Experimental Biology Conference, which she found to be impressively organized in line with the mission and vision of the organization, which prioritize “building a vibrant and inclusive identity.” She particularly appreciated the warm welcome given to early-career scholars at the conference, and it inspired her to become an AAA member. Explains Rigueur, “[The organizers] allowed students of all levels in their career to perform their best and to network first hand with the leaders of the organization. This conference highly succeeded at diversity inclusion and I thought that I could learn and be a contributor to the scientific humanitarian work the organization strived to achieve.”
At the AAA’s 2018 Annual Meeting, Rigueur was honored with a First Place award for her poster presentation. Rigueur completed her doctorate in Cell Biology at UCLA in 2016, after which she joined CCMB as a Postdoctoral Scholar – Research Associate in the laboratory of Professor Amy Merrill.