Debora Kaliski, PhD

Associate Professor

Dr. Debora Zamora Kaliski is a native of San Antonio, Texas. She is a first generation graduate that values the opportunities that arise through earning a doctoral degree. She enjoys sharing her successes and struggles with younger generations in hopes of mentoring them through their own journey in obtaining a degree.

Dr. Kaliski earned her bachelor's degree from The University of Texas at San Antonio where she was a Minority Access to Research Careers (MARC) trainee. As a graduate student she was a Minority Biomedical Research Support (MBRS) trainee, Sloan Foundation Scholar and recipient of a National Institutes of Health Ruth L. Kirschstein NRSA Individual Pre-doctoral Fellowship (F31). Her graduate work involved the characterization of central respiratory chemoreceptors in the amphibian, Rana catesbeiana. She earned her doctoral degree in Biology-Neuroscience from The University of Texas at San Antonio in 2008 in Biology.

Dr. Kaliski did her post-graduate work at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UTHSCSA) where she studied redox-sensitive mitochondrial protein modifications and their role in the formation of atherosclerosis in C57/BL6 mice. At UTHSCSA she was a National Institutes of Health Institutional Research Training Grant (T32) trainee.

What makes Dr. Kaliski passionate about education and mentoring are the experiences she had en route to her doctorate. Many of the programs that funded her education had a mentorship component that was essential to her success. She has also been an active member of the Society for Advancement of Hispanic/Chicano and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS) since 2001. Through the society, Dr. Kaliski was able to develop essential skills such as networking, leadership, written and oral presentation skills and most importantly a sense of obligation to give back to the community. In the end, Dr. Kaliski would like to measure her success through the success of the students she encounters.