Diana Moreno-Santillan

Born and raised in Mexico City, Dr. Moreno is an evolutionary biologist with over a decade of experience in molecular and computational biology. Her research focuses on uncovering the evolutionary and biological mechanisms connecting immunity and aging, primarily using bats as her non-model organism. Beyond the lab, Dr. Moreno is deeply committed to community building and scientific outreach. She is the co-founder of both Mujeres Latinas in STEM and Ciencia Pal Barrio, a scientific communication initiative.

• Bioinformatics
• Molecular Biology
• Cell culture

• Comparative omics
• Evolutionary biology
• Translational biology
• Aging and immunity

• Instituto Politecnico Nacional, Mexico, PhD in Biological and Chemical Sciences, 2019
• Instituto Politecnico Nacional, Mexico, MA in Biological and Chemical Sciences, 2014
• Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, BA in Biology, 2010

• Postdoctoral Researcher, UC Berkeley (2021-2025)
• Postdoctoral Researcher, Texas Tech University (2019-2021)

• Mentor Award, IB SURE program, UC Berkeley, 2025
• National Research Award, Instituto Politecnico Nacional, Mexico, 2019

• Osmanski, A. B., Paulat, N. S., Korstian, J., Grimshaw, J. R., Halsey, M., Sullivan, K. A. M., Moreno-Santillan, D. D.  ́ , et
  al. (2023). ”Insights into mammalian TE diversity through the curation of 248 genome assemblies.” Science (New York,
  N.Y.), 380(6643), eabn1430.
• Castellanos, F. X., Moreno-Santillan, D*.  ́ , et al. (2023). ”The evolution of antimicrobial peptides in Chiroptera.”
  Frontiers in Immunology, 14, 1250229. (*Corresponding author).
• Moreno-Santillan, D. D. , Lama, M. T., Guti ́errez Guerrero, Y. T., Brown, M. A., Donat, P., Zhao, H., Rossiter, S. J., Yohe, L. R., Potter, J. H., Teeling, E. C., Vernes, S. C., Davies, K. T. J., Myers, E., Hughes, G. M., Huang, Z., Hoffmann, F., Corthals, A. P., Ray, D. A., & Davalos, L. M. (2021). ”Large-scale genome sampling reveals unique immunity and metabolic adaptations in bats.” Molecular Ecology.