BME Student Named 2021 Udall Scholar

BME student Sebastian (Sebo) Diaz is among 55 students from 42 colleges and universities who have been selected as 2021 Udall Scholars. Udall Scholars are selected on the basis of commitment to careers in the environment, Tribal public policy, or Native health care; leadership potential; record of public service; and academic achievement.

Diaz's undergraduate work is focused on biomedical imaging and optics, and he has worked on developing endoscopes for early ovarian cancer detection and on creating new methods to diagnose lung disease. A member of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, he has served as president of the American Indian & Indigenous Health Alliance since his first year at the university. In addition, he is an Honors student and the current vice president of the Alpha Omicron Chapter of Zeta Beta Tau. 

Diaz was also recently featured on KXCI's Thesis Thursdays program, where he discussed his work examining novel detection methods for early ovarian cancer in BIO5 Director Jennifer Barton's Tissue Optics Lab.

"Ovarian cancer is very unique in that it's hard to detect early," Diaz said on KXCI. "For the longest time, a lot of people believed that ovarian cancer originated in the ovaries. But in the last 25 years it was found that it actually originated in the fallopian tubes and made its way down into the ovaries, where it makes more significant impact... I work on an endoscope called the cell-acquiring fallopian endoscope that goes into the fallopian tubes for cells and brings those cells back out for later evaluation."