Attabey Rodriguez Benitez

Science Friday, University of Michigan

Attabey Rodríguez Benítez is a 2020 AAAS Mass Media Science Fellow and is Science Friday’s 2020 summer radio intern. She is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Michigan in the Chemical Biology program, where she leverages nature’s power—enzymes—to pave new ways to make life-saving therapeutics. She is a proud first-generation student and received a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras. She enjoys all things science and how they intertwine with culture, history, and society, but she enjoys it more when food is also involved.

Hypholoma fasciculare, or the sulfur tuft mushroom

Alan Rockefeller via Mushroom Observer

Produced in partnership with NPR Scicommers

Fungi create genes to "win over" their plant friends and neighbors

The vast majority of plants depend on fungi for life, and fungi are always learning how to best befriend plants

Attabey Rodriguez Benitez
a woman with long hair leans over a river with mist

Lucas Fiat

Mapping extreme microbes in the Amazon’s Boiling River

Deep in the Peruvian Amazon, biochemist Rosa Vásquez Espinoza investigates the medicinal properties of microbes flowing in a sacred boiling river

Attabey Rodriguez Benitez