When Ral Mojica Soto-Albors came to MIT as a graduate student in 2019, he had been there before. As an undergraduate at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez, he had been here many times, including for eight months in 2018 when he was forced to move because of Hurricane Maria. These things, like taking part in the MIT Summer Research Bio Program (MSRP-Bio), which gives underrepresented minorities and other underserved students paid summer research opportunities, not only changed his course of study but also gave him the confidence to go for a PhD.
“I had a lot of worries about science before the summer program, because I had never been in an environment like MIT,” he says. “I thought it would be too hard and I wouldn’t be able to do it. But really, it’s just a group of people doing what they love. So, if you follow your passion, you’ll be happy and successful.”
Mojica is now a doctoral student in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT, where he is following his passion. He uses a complicated electrophysiology method called “patch clamp” to study the activity of neurons in living organisms. “It has everything that we haven’t paid much attention to in the past,” he says. “Neuroscientists have been very interested in how neurons spike. But I’m more interested in patterns in the activity of neurons below their thresholds.”
Opening a door to neuroscience
Mojica’s love for science grew as a child. Even though his parents encouraged him, he says, “It was hard because no one in my family was into science.” No one like that existed to whom I could turn for advice.” When he was in college, he became interested in how people act and decided to study psychology. At the same time, he was interested in the study of life. He says, “As I learned about psychology.” “I kept wondering how we, as people, come from such a jumble of neurons that talk to each other.”
In January 2017, he was invited to take part in the Center for Brains, Minds, and Machines Quantitative Biology Methods Program. This is an intensive, one-week program for underrepresented students of color that helps them get ready for careers in science. Even though he had taken a Python class at the University of Puerto Rico and some online courses, he says, “This was the first time I had to make my own tools and learn how to use a programming language to my advantage.”
Conversations he had with Mandana Sassanfar, a biology professor and the program’s coordinator, about his plans for the future were also a big part of how the program changed his undergraduate career. “She told me to change my major to biology because the psychology part is easier to learn on my own than the basics of biology,” he says. She also told him to send in an application to MSRP.
Mojica took her advice right away, and in the summer of 2017 he went back to MIT as an MSRP student to work in the lab of Associate Professor Mark Harnett  in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and the McGovern Institute. There, he focused on doing calcium imaging on the retrosplenial cortex to figure out what role neurons play in figuring out how to move around in a complex space. The experience opened his eyes. Mojica points out that there aren’t many specialized programs at UPRM, which limited his exposure to subjects from different fields. “That was my way into the field of neuroscience, which I never would have been able to do otherwise.”
Weathering the storm
Mojica went back home to start his senior year, but in September 2017, Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico and caused a lot of damage. “Almost a year after the hurricane, the island was still having blackouts, and they are still happening today. “It’s hard for people who need oxygen or medicine for diabetes that needs to be kept cold, for example,” he says. “My family was lucky that, four months after the hurricane, they could count on having electricity. “But I knew a lot of people who lived without electricity for eight, nine, or ten months,” he says.
The damage from the hurricane affected every part of life, including school. Some 2017 MSRP students from Puerto Rico, like Mojica, came to MIT for the spring semester to take advantage of its educational resources. He moved back to campus in February 2018, took his final exams for the fall semester, and then spent the spring and summer of that year in classes and doing research.
“That was the first time I felt out of place and missed home,” he says. He wasn’t alone, thank goodness. He made friends with a Puerto Rican student who helped him through that hard time. Both of their families were dealing with the problems that come with living on an island after a hurricane. They understood each other and helped each other out. Mojica says, “We had just gotten out of the hurricane mess, and when we got to MIT, everything was fine.” It was a shock.”
Even though his life was very unstable, Mojica was determined to get a PhD. “I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life just taking in information,” he says. “I wanted to learn something. I wanted to be ahead of the curve in something.”
Paying it ahead
As a fourth-year PhD student in the Harnett Lab, he is doing just that. To study how neurons learn, he is using a method called “patch clamp electrophysiology” in new ways. The patch clamp method is the only one that lets him see activity in mice neurons below the point where they start firing.
Mojica says, “I study how single neurons learn and change, or “plasticize.” “What does an animal cell do when I show it something new and unexpected? And if I stimulate the cell, can I teach it to respond to something it didn’t before?” This research could help people who have had serious brain injuries get better. Plasticity is a key part of how the brain works. “For example, if we could figure out how neurons learn or even how to change them, we could speed up recovery from brain tissue loss that could be life-threatening.”
Mojica is not only interested in research, but also in helping others. When he talks about Gabriella, one of his former undergraduate students who is now a full-time graduate student in the Harnett lab, his voice rises. He is now a mentor for MSRP students and helps people who want to get a PhD with their applications. “When I was going through the PhD process, I didn’t have mentors who were like me,” he says.
Mojica has seen firsthand how mentoring helps. Even though he didn’t have anyone to teach him about science, his music teacher as a child had a big impact on his early career and always encouraged him to follow his interests. “He knew a lot about how to deal with the confusing mess of being 17 or 18 and trying to figure out what you want to do with the rest of your life,” he says with a smile.
Mojica isn’t sure what he wants to do with his career in the future, but he knows one thing: “A big part of it will be mentoring people from similar backgrounds to mine who don’t have as many opportunities.” I want to keep that in the foreground.”
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