A warm city of warm hearts

On Veteran's Day 2022, soon after moving to San Antonio from Ohio to start my new job at the University of Texas Health Science Center, I was enjoying the relatively warmer weather, whereas most people around me were bundled up in heavy clothes. Having quickly learned that the whole city was well connected by public transportation, I was riding a bus when a septuagenarian offered me a big jacket “to beat the cold weather.” I explained that I had just traveled from a cooler place, but such an offer of help touched my heart.

A city is the collective impressions of its people, and I have found San Antonio to be very diverse and vibrant as well as welcoming and helpful. The weather is warm throughout the year, especially in July and August, with just a dash of coolness from December to February. Despite the heat, the city bubbles with energy and weekends are packed with colorful social events such as a special “Fiesta” every April to commemorate the valor of heroes of the Battle of the Alamo. 

I work at the structural biology core of UTHSCSA. I prepare purified proteins in bulk amounts from different sources and put them into pipelines for downstream processes. Researchers subject each protein to structural studies by X-ray crystallography, nuclear magnetic resonance or cryo-electron microscopy to assess its function under normal physiological state and determine why it may become the causative agent of a disease or use it to find potential drug candidates to alleviate the disease.

It won’t be an exaggeration to mention that health science–related research is one of the main themes of research all across Texas. In addition to UTHSCSA, major research centers in San Antonio include the Texas Biomedical Research Institute, the Southwest Research Institute and the University of Texas at San Antonio. UT San Antonio conducts a wide variety of diverse research activities, whereas the rest of the centers focus on exploring the underlying causes of diseases and measures to give people a better life by developing more effective medicines.