Mariana Vargas-Caballero

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BIO
Lecturer in neuroscience at the University of Southampton (UK). Mom of two girls in a dual-academic couple.

Instagram: @vargas.caballero.lab
Twitter: @synapseMVClab

Mariana Vargas-Caballero

“An academic career sometimes feels like a race but I set clear boundaries to enjoy my family life as much as my work.”


I am a Lecturer in Neuroscience at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom. Since I was a little girl, I loved science, and fell in love with cells the first time I looked through a microscope. Twenty years ago, during my undergraduate in Mexico I learned how to record electrical signals from brain cells, and I wanted to keep learning and to discover new things.

An amazing mentor of mine suggested I could apply to the University of Cambridge PhD programme, which at the time looked like a big shot for me. I applied and was accepted, and I would not change that experience for anything.

Also, at Cambridge, I met my now husband who is also a scientist and an equal partner in all our endeavours. After postdoctoral training in Canada we moved to Oxford where we also had postdoctoral positions, and where our two daughters were born.

I applied to the University of Southampton when I was pregnant with my second daughter. I had my interview at 32 weeks pregnant! I was offered the job of senior fellow on a tenure-track position.

The university agreed to wait a year for me to start my job and that made a big difference for me to be able to both enjoy my second maternity leave, and to submit my work for publication. My husband was also able to secure a position at the same university and we were finally relieved to solve the “two-body problem” that is so common for scientist couples.

My daughters are now 9 and 11 years old and I love our day to day. An academic career sometimes feels like a race to get somewhere (papers, projects, grants) but I set clear boundaries to enjoy my family life as much as my work.

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