Mitali Ray, a postdoctoral associate doing research in Pitt's schools of Nursing and Public Health, has been named a National Institutes of Health MOSAIC (Maximizing Opportunities for Scientific and Academic Independent Careers) Scholar.
The competitive program is part of NIH’s efforts to enhance diversity within the academic biomedical workforce and is designed to facilitate a timely transition of promising postdoctoral researchers to independent, tenure-track or equivalent research-intensive faculty positions.
Ray, who was born to Indian immigrants and grew up in the Lehigh Valley, had her love of science sparked during an undergraduate prerequisite biology course at Towson University. After earning her PhD in biomedical sciences at Temple, Ray joined Pitt, where she researches pregnancy-related cardiovascular disease, exploring the biological underpinnings that explain how chronic stress drives racial disparities of hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, such as preeclampsia.
She also is the postdoctoral representative for the Pitt Senate’s Equity, Inclusion and Anti-Discrimination Advocacy Committee and a board member for the Queer Family Planning Project, a nonprofit dedicated to offsetting family planning costs for the queer community in Pittsburgh.