Christian Bustamante

Biography

Christian earned his B.S. in Pharmaceutical Chemistry and M.S. in Biomedical Sciences from the University of Antioquia in Medellin, Colombia. During his master’s studies, he focused on drug discovery for tropical diseases, leveraging bioinformatic tools to repurpose existing drugs. His curiosity about the brain led him to pursue neuroscience, joining the Neurosciences Group of Antioquia (GNA) to work on a clinical trial testing an anti-amyloid antibody for Alzheimer’s disease treatment. In 2022, Christian moved to the USA to work at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, where he investigated the molecular basis of addiction in alcohol use disorder (AUD), using bulk and single-cell RNA sequencing to identify genes involved in the progression from social drinking to AUD.

Research

At UCSB, Christian joined Dr. Kenneth Kosik’s lab, where he is exploring electrophysiology and multiomic techniques using brain organoids and human samples to study memory and consciousness.