Dr. Lina Marcela Carmona is a postdoctoral research scientist in the Costa lab at the Zuckerman Institute at Columbia University. She received her BA from the University of Pennsylvania where she majored in molecular biology and minored in legal studies and history of American law. At Penn, she began her research training in the lab of Dr. Tobias Baumgart working on biochemical characterizations of membrane phase separation. She conducted her doctoral training in the Immunobiology Department at Yale University in the lab of Dr. David Schatz where she focused on the evolutionary history of the Recombination Activating Gene (RAG) proteins, and their relationship to transposable elements. As a postdoc, she has sought to apply her molecular training to address the cellular changes underlying motor learning. She is currently working to define the cell types and cell states engaged in motor cortex during learning.