September 14, 2023
Ileana Soto Reyes, Ph.D. draws students into neuroscience research
By Michael Hagan ’15, ’19G
When she was an undergraduate student at the University of Puerto Rico, Ileana Soto Reyes, Ph.D., assistant professor of biology, fell into research almost accidentally when a friend recommended she speak with a professor about a paid assistantship.
“The professor started talking to me like I had already accepted the position. I couldn’t say no,” said Soto Reyes.
Before she knew it, she was in a research laboratory studying the regenerative properties of optic nerves in frogs.
At Providence College, where she has been a researcher and assistant professor in the college’s new neuroscience major since August 2022, Soto Reyes says that drawing students into research is at the core of her mission.
“Sometimes we don’t understand right away how a moment will impact our career paths and lives. Moments of opportunity lead to others. Doors open to more doors,” she said.
Soto Reyes facilitates moments like these as she and her students study the fast-growing field of neuroscience, a discipline concerned with the biological foundations of behavior, emotion, and thought, and conditions emerging from the structure and properties of the nervous system.
Her research focuses on neurodegenerative diseases and neurodevelopmental disorders. She studies diseases that cause the brain to function improperly. One challenge is that “we actually don’t know that much about normal function,” she said.
Soto Reyes is investigating a specific mutation in the PTEN gene, which produces an essential enzyme found in most of the body’s tissues. This mutation causes brain overgrowth and has been linked to conditions including cancer and autism. Soto Reyes enjoys viewing neurons, also called nerve cells, with the mutation under a fluorescent microscope with students in the lab.
“They can see in the fluorescent microscope the way that the neuron’s dendritic trees are altered,” she said.
Dendritic trees are made of dendrites — the branches connecting neurons, transmitting electrical impulses between them to produce thought and behavior. Soto Reyes’ office in PC’s Science Complex is decorated with colorful images of dendritic trees captured by the fluorescent microscope, highlighting the beauty and complexity of the human body and mind in their most basic building blocks.
Soto Reyes’ first experience outside of Puerto Rico was an internship in 1999 at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. She did not know English when she applied, but the principal investigator on her team was practicing his Spanish, so the two communicated and practiced their second languages together.
After earning a Ph.D. in biology/anatomy from the University of Puerto Rico in 2005, Soto Reyes was a researcher at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, where she grew in love of the outdoors and took up hiking.
From 2015-2021, Soto Reyes was a professor at Rowan University, a public research university in Glassboro, New Jersey. She knew from her earliest aspirations to become a professor that she preferred to teach at a smaller liberal arts college, where face time with students and, importantly, lab time with students of all levels would be more plentiful.
“Interaction between professors and students is so important. If you want to be a researcher, you have to have a mentor,” she said.
When she saw a position open at Providence College, she was drawn by size and curriculum. She already had come to love the city Providence through visits to her sister who was a student research intern at Brown University in the summer of 2008.
Since arriving at PC, Soto Reyes has benefited from institutional resources and outside grants that she says make her “feel like a queen.” They include almost $800,000 in grants from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation for the study of Niemann-Pick disease, a progressive genetic disorder affecting children. Through the grants, undergraduate students have paid research positions in the Soto Reyes lab.
“I had a great first year, people were so helpful, students were so enthusiastic,” Soto Reyes said. “This college is true to what it preaches — I see it and feel it in this community. I want to recognize that if I have any success, it’s not mine alone. It belongs to everyone who has helped and supported me.”
Soto Reyes looks forward to continuing to teach and research at PC and hopes to explore other academic disciplines. She is particularly interested in learning more about theology and scripture. This may seem disparate from her native fields of biology and neuroscience, but she sees connections between hers and all other disciplines.
“Anything that involves the brain is connected to neuroscience,” she said. The composition of PC’s neuroscience faculty reflects this — it includes biologists, psychologists, a philosopher, an engineer, a mathematician, a physicist, and a chemist.
Soto Reyes hopes to continue to lead her students to being surprised by science. “That’s what science is — investigation. And we investigate because we don’t know. And what we don’t know can surprise us. It’s all the process of discovery,” she said. “Ultimately, neuroscience helps us understand ourselves and each other. By studying the roots of behavior and conditions, we can learn to be more compassionate and understanding.”
The Fund for Providence College supports dedicated professors, like Dr. Reyes, and development of new academic opportunities, like the neuroscience major. A gift to The Fund for Providence College contributes to the success of faculty scholars and the students they teach — both in and outside the classroom.
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