Diversity in Life Sciences

Dr. Ewa Bomba-Warczak is an incoming tenure track Assistant Professor in the Department of Physiology at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine opening her laboratory in January 2025. Her research investigates how cells with exceptionally long lifespans – neurons and oocytes - establish and maintain their mitochondrial networks throughout their life, and how the stability of mitochondrial components contributes to cell’s health and age-dependent degeneration.  In her laboratory she combines in vitro cell and in vivo mouse models with mass spectrometry-based proteomics, biochemistry, genetics, and fluorescent imaging to define the mechanisms governing the lifelong mitochondrial homeostasis in health and disease.

Dr. Bomba-Warczak received her PhD from University of Wisconsin – Madison in the laboratory of Dr. Edwin Chapman, and HHMI Investigator, followed by postdoctoral studies under the mentorship of Dr. Jeffrey Savas at Northwestern University. She has received her B.S. in Biological Sciences with honors from University of Illinois at Chicago – a degree she obtained thanks to the generosity of federal Pell grants and Honors College Tuition waivers. Ewa is a recipient of a Jerzy Rose Award for most outstanding graduate thesis in Neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, NIH Kirschstein-NRSA postdoctoral fellowship and NIH MOSAIC K99 Pathway to Independence Fellowship to Promote Diversity. She was recently selected as a Leading Edge Fellow, an initiative to improve gender diversity of life sciences in the USA. As an immigrant and first-generation college graduate, most of her career she has focused on the recruitment and retention of low-income and first-generation college students in STEMM. She is also a co-founder of MITOchats, online seminar series featuring graduate students and postdoctoral fellows working in the field of mitochondria.