Diana Marcela Bolaños Rodriguez

Diana Marcela Bolaños Rodríguez is a Colombian marine biologist who has studied and classified various types of platyhelminths. She was a recipient of the L'Oréal-UNESCO Fellowship for Women in Science in 2010, was selected as Colombian biologist of the year in 2012, and in 2013 was named by the BBC as one of the top ten women in science in Latin America.

Biography Bolaños Rodríguez was born in 1980 in Bogotá, Colombia, and grew up there. At age 19, she enrolled in the Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano at the campus in Santa Marta on the Caribbean side of Colombia. After completing her undergraduate work with a thesis on flatworms, in 2003, Bolaños continued her education at the University of New Hampshire (UNH) in the United States. She received her PhD in zoology from UNH in Durham, New Hampshire, in 2008 with an Award for Excellence in Research from the Department of Zoology. a marine worm which is unique in its ability to generate tissue through stem cells. whom she had met while in New Hampshire, and in 2008 returned to Colombia to continue her research, completing a database of flatworm species and their taxonomic groups. Bolaños also took a teaching post as a visiting professor for the University of the Andes (Uniandes). and she used the award to complete her postdoctoral research at Uniandes. Bolaños then took a post as an assistant professor in the Biology Program at the Universidad de Cartagena.

Bolaños has continued her research and is working on comparisons between polyclads, planarians and other types of platyhelminths and their abilities to regenerate.

Selected works