My name is Fernando Castillo Rodríguez (he/him), and I am a fourth-year PhD candidate in Cognitive Psychology in the Psychological and Brain Sciences Department. I obtained my Bachelor of Arts in Marketing from Universidad del Istmo in 2019. I am originally from Panama City, Panama (Central America); I moved to Iowa in the fall of 2023, and it is the first place I have lived in the US. Before this, I lived in the UK for a year and a half, where I earned a Master's in Behavioral Science (with a major in Psychology and a minor in Economics) from the University of Warwick. 

As a graduate student, I have served as a Senator for the Psychological and Brain Sciences department (Alternate 24-25; Full 25-26) in the Graduate Student Senate (GSS). As part of that role, I served as one of GSS's representatives in the Graduate and Professional Allocations (GPAC), the committee responsible for reviewing student organizations' funding requests. As Director of Communication, my goal is to represent the breadth and depth of the Graduate and Professional students' presence in the UI campus' everyday operations and success. Additionally, I will focus on highlighting the interdisciplinary approaches to research happening between different department/units in which Graduate and Professional students are involved and provide all resources possible for those students that are interested in alternative careers to academia. 

Outside of GSPG, I am the president of the Vision Sciences Association (VSA) at Iowa, a student organization focused on supporting the advancement of vision sciences by facilitating interdisciplinary dialogue and research communication for students and researchers across campus and the state of Iowa community.