Please join us to hear Dr. Patricia Molina speak about her success in academic biomedical research, reflect on the value of lessons from each training and professional development stage, and provide inspiration and hope to trainees and early career investigators during the current environment. 

About Patricia E. Molina, MD, PhD,

Dr. Molina earned her MD from the Universidad Francisco Marroquín in Guatemala, Central America, and completed her PhD in Physiology at LSU Medical Center under the mentorship of Dr. John J. Spitzer. She subsequently completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Vanderbilt University with Dr. Naji N. Abumrad, prior to joining the faculty at SUNY Stony Brook in the Department of Surgery and later at NorthShore University Hospital and Brookhaven National Lab. In 1999, she returned to the Department of Physiology at LSU Health Sciences Center as an Associate Professor. She has served as the Richard Ashman, PhD Professor and Department Head of Physiology since 2008, and more recently appointed Senior Associate Dean for Research in 2025. Dr. Molina has maintained continuous extramural research funding since completion of her PhD and has mentored numerous undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral trainees. Dr. Molina is the PI and Director of the NIAAA funded Comprehensive Alcohol Research Center on HIV, and a T32 and T35 focusing on biomedical consequences of alcohol. Her research focuses on the effects of alcohol and drugs of abuse on behavioral, cardiometabolic, and immune comorbidities, including HIV/AIDS and traumatic brain injury.