“I didn’t expect to become a regenerative medicine researcher. My background is in nursing. When I finished my undergraduate degree in Spain, I was working with patients in the hospital, taking care of them. I also met a lot of people through health committees I was involved in, and a person I met told me that I had potential to be a scientist. In Europe, a master’s program had just opened to people with three-year degrees, like I had, so he said to me, ‘You now have the opportunity to do something you couldn’t do before.’
But I wanted to stay in the hospital taking care of patients because I wanted to help people. Soon I realized that I would also be helping people if I pursued science, and if I did it well, I might . . . “