Sofya Borinskaya is an IRACDA postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Dr. Martha Soto, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, Rutgers University.

As a postdoctoral fellow in the highly competitive NIH IRACDA/INSPIRE program she is receiving a research-intensive training and mentored teaching experience at Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs).

Sofya holds B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Binghamton University, SUNY and Ph.D. in Biomedical Science with Cell Analysis and Modeling concentration from UCONN Health, Farmington, CT. In graduate school, she worked on interdisciplinary projects about dynamics of the actin cytoskeleton. Sofya studied the role of the adaptor protein Nck in signaling from cell membrane to the actin cytoskeleton and regulation of actin dynamics by cofilin and capping proteins using detailed biochemical/computational modeling. Her postdoctoral research projects extend to investigating actin dynamics in C. elegans model organism. More specifically Sofya investigates the role of branched actin in regulating cadherin/HMR-1 transmembrane receptor dynamics in adherens junctions. She also explores the roles of linear actin nucleation mechanisms in polarity establishment and cellular migration during epidermal and intestinal morphogenesis.

Sofya is an advocate of math education for life sciences and interested in a career of an educator-researcher at primarily undergraduate institution. During her graduate career she took a variety of courses in teaching and instruction, computational biology education and earned the Certificate in College Teaching and Instruction. She also contributed to the development of the computational science teaching materials for undergraduate life science curriculum. Additionally, Sofya is learning and practicing how to build creative, playful and inclusive environment in the classroom and how improvisation and performance enhance science education as well as cultivate equity and diversity.