Boosting Developmental Biology in Latin America: The Legacy of Roberto Mayor

9/25/2026

By Brenda Pardo

After finishing a postdoctoral fellowship in the United Kingdom, Roberto Mayor returned to his home country, Chile, to start his own research group.  During his postdoctoral studies, he identified, for the first time, genes that mark the neural crest and was excited to continue this work. However, once the initial rush of enthusiasm had passed, he found himself in an isolated science community where only one other person was studying developmental biology. So, he decided to set about changing the equation. Mayor’s story is an inspiring example of how, by training young scientists, he boosted science in Latin America and connected a whole community to the world. His educational activism in this effort has recently earned him the Viktor Hamburger Outstanding Educator Prize from the Society for Developmental Biology in 2026.

Mayor in 1995 at the University of Chile

“To decide to do science in Latin America [back then], you had to be a little bit crazy,” said Mayor, currently a Professor of Developmental and Cellular Neurobiology at University College London. It was 1993, and doing science in Chile was a challenge. Research funding was scarce. Most supplies had to be imported from the United States or Europe, and, more critically, the scientific community was small. With these challenges, Mayor remained committed to setting up his lab at the Universidad de Chile, even though he recalled, “there was nobody to talk to about [his] research in the whole country.”

It was obvious that there were many problems with doing research in Chile. Some were too big to solve, but others, like growing a community, were possible to address, and Mayor decided to do it. First, he convinced the University to hire more developmental biologists. Second, he decided to organize a “Practical Course in Developmental Biology” to build a community, not just in Chile, but across Latin America.

Mayor teaching the Practical Course in Developmental Biology

The Practical Course in Developmental Biology was first held in 1999. It was intended for graduate students, and it remains so today. “We were not pretending to convert established scientists to developmental biology, we were thinking of the new generations,” said Mayor. The course takes place at the Center of Marine Biology Research in Quintay, Chile. It aims to showcase the remarkable development of an embryo and to foster interaction between students and well-known scientists from Europe and the United States, following the model of the Embryology Course at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory. At the time, this type of scientific interaction was very rare for Latino students, and Mayor saw it as a way to inspire them and open up opportunities for them to do research abroad.

During the course, the guest scientists are not only lecturers but also hands-on bench instructors. Mayor treasures the moment in which he watched Nobel Laureate Eric Wieschaus teach students to sharpen forceps to handle fly embryos. This relaxed environment fosters opportunities for connection, and he said it is “particularly important for Latin American students, who for many reasons, maybe even the language [because they are non-native English speakers], are a bit shyer…” 

Course instructor and Nobel Prize awardee Eric Wieshaus lecturing the students

Every new project comes with its challenges, and for Mayor and the course, the main ones were economic.

“This is a very expensive course,” said Mayor. In addition to paying for the guest scientists, the course covers students' food, travel, and lodging. The reason for this is “the economic circumstances in Latin America are very different, so we don't want to exclude anybody who cannot pay the fees to be part of this experience”.

When Mayor was raising money for the course, the Chilean government did not offer any support. Yet Mayor’s persistence has led him to secure funding every year, with contributions from European and American organizations, including EMBO and the NIH. 

In the beginning, Mayor was unaware of the impact the course was going to have on the students. Fernanda Palominos, a postdoc at the University of California, Berkeley currently applying for faculty positions, used the words “life-changing " to describe the course and her interactions with Mayor. She vividly remembers having lunch with Mayor during the course and having a conversation that guided her career path. She also recalled that, outside the lab, Mayor and students would discuss at length the importance of giving back to Latin America: “Roberto taught us to … go forward knowing we can make a difference if we keep pushing towards a better future.”

The impact of Mayor’s mentorship is multiplied by the hundreds of students he trained in the course. Students like Palominos have been inspired to create initiatives such as LatinxDB. She emphasized, “It’s also our responsibility to keep Roberto in mind, and to keep working for what he has worked with, along with other people, so we can continue having the opportunities to dream big again.” 

Mayor could not have predicted how active this group of alumni was going to be in advancing developmental biology all over the world. After the first two editions of the course, in 1999 and 2001, the students advocated for the creation of a network among Latin American countries. This network evolved into the Latin American Society for Developmental Biology. This society initially identified most of the laboratories in the area and connected them, initiating many collaborations. The society also organizes biannual meetings, both its own and co-organized with different societies, ultimately increasing the visibility of Latin America’s science.

Despite the success of the Quintay course, Mayor continues to think of new ways to teach developmental biology. Teaching it to someone who is already interested is “like preaching to the converted,” Mayor said. Students who have never taken a developmental biology class will not be interested in something they do not know about. This is the main motivation for Mayor’s latest course, “Synthetic Developmental Biology: Engineering Life”, in which undergraduate students from the main universities in Chile learn about embryogenesis, with modules on imaging, physics, computational biology, and synthetic biology. The course features Chilean scientists as lecturers, along with a few international researchers in areas not represented in Chile, aiming to connect undergraduates with labs across the country. Students have reflected on the course’s impact, and one student’s words capture the feelings of many: “I started this course not knowing what Developmental Biology meant; I finished it knowing that it is what I want to dedicate my life to.”

To Mayor, seeing Latino students succeeding in science is one of the most rewarding outcomes of his mentorship and community-building work. Latino scientists, including himself, are committed and resilient and can leverage these cultural strengths to pave the way forward and help others do the same. Roberto Mayor’s legacy is a reminder that while some social and economic challenges in science remain out of reach, many are within the power to change, and progress begins with the decision to act.

Last Updated 10/06/2026