Welcome to the Herd: Gisela Martinez-Romero

“When I started teaching students as one of my duties in the Department of Pathology in vet school I taught students how to do necropsies and I realized that teaching was very natural for me,” says Dr. Gisela Martinez-Romero, who was appointed in October as assistant clinical professor in the Department of Comparative Pathology at Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine.

After earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees at universities in Mexico, Martinez-Romero worked as an associate professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico College of Veterinary Medicine in Mexico City for seven years. She completed a residency and earned a Ph.D. in anatomic pathology at Auburn University, before serving as a visiting cardiac pathologist for the Great Ape Heart Project at the University of Illinois.

“When I was a student, I had many professors that were so good at teaching they made it look easy,” Martinez-Romero explains. “And when I started teaching pathology to students in Mexico City, I realized that it is not as easy as those excellent professors made it look.”

With her experience with work on hearts in Illinois, Martinez-Romero was drawn to Cummings School for its current research on canine heart disease. “So here I have a good combination between teaching and doing diagnostic research, which is related to cardiomyopathies in small animals,” she says.

Martinez-Romero started work in the lab quickly, doing biopsies during just her second week on campus. “I wasn’t expecting that, but I’m happy to start.” Next semester, she will begin teaching the cardiovascular pathology course. “I’m excited. I have a lot of knowledge to share with the students from my last two years of working with hearts.”

Until then, she’ll be bracing for her first New England winter. The Mexico native hopes that her experience with winter in Chicago has prepared her. “We’ll see,” she jokes.