Kavli ScholarJavier A. Rodriguez-Casariego

Javier A. Rodriguez-Casariego investigates how environmental experience encodes cellular memory and shapes physiological and behavioral resilience in marine organisms. He is a Research Assistant Professor in the Institute of Environment at Florida International University, where he integrates epigenomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics, to reveal regulatory mechanisms of neurophysiological and phenotypic plasticity, and long-term responses to environmental stimulus across different models including corals, mollusks, and fish.

Dr. Rodriguez-Casariego earned his Ph.D. in Biology from Florida International University in 2021 under Dr. Eirin-Lopez, where he characterized epigenetic mechanisms underlying coral responses to diverse environmental stressors. He then completed an NSF-CREST postdoctoral fellowship with Dr. Mark Miller in the Institute of Neurobiology at the University of Puerto Rico and with Dr. Lynne Fieber in the National Aplysia Resource at the University of Miami, followed by an NIH Diversity Supplement to continue his postdoctoral research with the National Aplysia Resource under the supervision of Drs. Michael Schmale and Danielle McDonald. His postdoctoral and current research use Aplysia to dissect how hypoxia experience drives persistent cellular states in the central nervous system - linking behavioral outputs to gene- and chromatin-level programs across generations.

Throughout his training, Dr. Rodriguez-Casariego has been recognized with an NSF-CREST Graduate Fellowship, an NSF-CREST Postdoctoral Fellowship, and an NIH Diversity Supplement. He is committed to advance data-driven frameworks that link gene, protein and network-level changes to environmental exposure across taxa.