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Who is Francisco "Paco" Andrade?
Research is His Life


Paco was born in Tijuana, Mexico. The funny thing about Tijuana is that everybody knows where it is, but nobody knows anybody from there. Now you do.    

Paco always knew he was going to be a scientist, but there were no role models in his family for this career. Science and math were subjects he was really interested in growing up, although he was not very good at either of them. However, he was fascinated by anything to do with medicine. During high school, Paco took a lot of tests that were to help him figure out possible careers. He remembers being told he should think about being a banker (like his dad) or maybe a dentist. Scientist was not one of the careers suggested for him.

College Years
During high school, Paco decided that he was going to study medicine and then go into biomedical research. So for college, he decided to go to the Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey in Monterrey, Mexico, which has a medical school in a university that is known for its engineering and computer science classes. So, in addition to the regular medical school curriculum, he got the chance to take classes in more advanced math and statistics, physics, computer programming, and assorted fun things that helped later on in graduate school. He graduated in 1988 with his Bachelor of Medicine degree.

Learning About Physiology
Paco blames two of his physiology teachers in that medical school for his interest in physiology. Both teachers made it clear how physiology tries to understand a system (it is an integrative science) not just one small piece of it. In addition, one of the teachers showed Paco that he could have a career in science and research. The other teacher taught Paco not to believe everything he’s told.

Paco then decided to move to the US to go to graduate school. He got his Ph.D.in physiology studying how muscles fatigue at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, Texas in 1994 (NOTE: This is separate from the University of Texas San Antonio campus). He went on for more training on how to study muscle function at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, TX; University of Kentucky Medical Center in Lexington, KY; and Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, OH from 1994 to 1998. He also had the chance to spend a year (1996-1997) in Sweden at the Karolinska Institute as a guest researcher.

Getting a Job
After finishing his training, Dr. Andrade needed to decide what kind of career he wanted to have. He decided that, just like when he was a child, he still wanted to just do research. So he only applied for jobs at places where you were expected to do mostly research and not as much teaching, especially of large classes. In 1998, he got a job at Case Western Reserve University as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurology. This spring (2004) he got another job offer and this summer moved back to the Department of Physiology at the University of Kentucky.

Muscle Research
Dr. Andrade and his colleagues (because he doesn’t work alone) study how muscles work and adapt to changing conditions.  Most of their projects involve trying to understand the inner workings of very specialized muscles: the muscles that move the eyes (extraocular muscles) and the muscles that control the larynx or voice box. Their research studies the function of normal muscles and their central controller (the brain) and the diseases that act at the different steps of the process.

Everyday Activities
Most of Dr. Andrade’s time is spent keeping his research lab going. He makes sure all the projects are working, he writes proposals to try and get more money to do more research, he writes papers about the results of the various projects so that other scientists know about them, and he finds other people doing similar research to work with him on some projects. There are some techniques that only Dr. Andrade can do. That gives him an excuse to still be able to work in the lab and not just in his office doing paperwork. There are also budgets for all his projects to make sure they use all the money but don’t overspend and people in his lab to hire and make sure they are doing their jobs. He also has committees and jobs he has to deal with for the department and the school.

Free Time
For fun Dr. Andrade reads, listens to music, and cooks. He’s a full-time soccer dad, so that takes up more of his weekends (and some weeknights) than he cares to count (his wife keeps telling him that he’s forced by law to do that). When he thinks about it, though, driving the kids around can be very relaxing.

He also enjoys giving science-related talks to schools and other groups. This is the type of teaching that he enjoys the most, and he doesn’t consider it work.

Advice for a High School Student
Science is fun… really fun. It is not about knowing more than others, because you usually don’t.  Instead, you realize that if you don’t know something, you can try to figure it out.