Andrea was born and raised in Mexico, where she did her bachelor studies in Pharmaceutical Sciences. She then went to the Netherlands to do her master studies and absolutely fell in love with pathogenic bacteria. She actually thinks studying bacteria is one of the coolest things one can do. She came to UC Berkeley as part of her master studies and stayed in the Portnoy lab after that. She is now a joint PhD student in the Stanley and Portnoy labs where she studies how bacteria have adapted to their host in order to succeed in infection. In particular, she is interested in the role of aldehydes in host-pathogen infection dynamics.