Biography
Dr. Castro has a Doctorate degree in Clinical Psychology (PsyD) and a Post-Doctoral Master’s degree in Clinical and Translational Research (MSc.). Currently, she is an Associate Professor at Ponce Health Sciences University (PHSU), Puerto Rico. She holds a joint position at PHSU’s School of Medicine (SOM) and School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences (SBBS). Dr. Castro also completed a Professional Mentoring Skills Enhancing Diversity Program (PROMISED) fellowship, granted by the Institute for Clinical Research Education, University of Pittsburg. This fellowship provided specialized skills to enhance mentors’ career coaching process, leadership, and mentoring abilities applied to mentee scientists from diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds.
Currently, Dr. Castro leads and co-leads NIH-funded trans-disciplinary population health cancer health disparity research projects, provides mentorship to graduate students, post-doctoral fellows and junior faculty and has served as peer reviewer for NIH’s Center for Scientific Review. Additionally, she has experience providing service to the community by partnering with local community-based organizations serving cancer patients and survivors and has delivered mental health care to cancer patients, survivors, and caregivers. She also created and leads a clinical practice training rotation that provides psycho-oncology mental healthcare delivery training to PHSU’s clinical psychology doctoral students, a rotation that has been fully integrated into an out-patient oncology clinic for the past 5 years.