People in the Life Sciences Division were deeply saddened to hear of the death of one of their former colleagues, Jessica Castañeda, over the Memorial Day weekend.  The car in which Ms. Castañeda was driving, with two passengers, was hit by a van, killing her and one of the passengers.

She had come to the Lab through the BBEI program (Berkeley Biotechnology Education, Inc.), and in her two years at the Laboratory (1999–2001) worked hard as first a Student Assistant and then a Technical Assistant to learn as much as possible and expand both her knowledge and her skills.  Her work and her education took place in the laboratory of Dr. Ruth Lupu in the Life Sciences Division, under the supervision of Dr. Miaw-Sheue Tsai, assisting with research into the mechanisms of breast cancer.  As Dr. Tsai said in a Jan. 2001 article in Currents, “Jessica has made tremendous progress since she first joined the lab in June 1999, from knowing very little biology to now being in charge of an independent project.”  Her increase in confidence and experience led her to leave the Laboratory for a job with a biotech firm in Fremont, which she then left for a job with a different biotech company where she was very successful, being promoted to Chemist I.

“People always remembered her,” said her friend Rosie Chau, a Life Sciences employee and fellow BBEI graduate, about Jessica.  She was always well-liked and enjoyable to be around, but was also very interested in her studies, wanting to do well.  Around the time of her departure from the Lab, she began pursuing an interest in singing, taking vocal lessons.  Other former colleagues remembered her as a hard worker with an unusually warm personality, very generous, with a good sense of humor.  Dr. Tsai spoke with evident pride of how Jessica had grown greatly in her time in the Lupu lab, coming to appreciate the significance of the research in which she was participating, seeing the larger picture and thus her role in it, to the point even of becoming excited about her participation, eagerly awaiting the results of the experiments.  About her success in starting from little knowledge to becoming an integral part of a research team, Dr. Tsai said of her, “It was not an easy path, but she made it!”

At the time of her death, Jessica Marie Castañeda-Rodríguez was 25 years old.