Dr. Luis Concha Loyola is an associate professor in the Department of Behavioral and Cognitive Neurobiology at the Institute of Neurobiology (INB), Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, campus Juiriquilla in Querétaro, Qro, Mexico. He is the Lab Leader of the Brain Connectivity Lab and the Director of the National Laboratory for Magnetic Resonance Imaging, which houses two human 3 Tesla MRI scanners as well as a 7 Tesla rodent MRI scanner (at the INB). His current research focuses on understanding how some forms of epilepsy develop and how they could be treated. He does so by leveraging cross-species insights from both humans as well as rodents, combining diffusion MRI with microscopy in both species.

The son of an accomplished pediatric surgeon and an elementary school teacher, Dr. Concha followed in his father’s steps by going to medical school in the small colonial city of Querétaro, Mexico. Instead of pursuing a medical specialty, he decided to try his luck in research at the University of Alberta in Canada, where he completed his PhD under the supervision of Dr. Christian Beaulieu and Dr. Donald Gross. There, he worked on some of the first tractography studies in the field of epilepsy. After his PhD, he went on to do a postdoctoral fellowship at the Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University, under the supervision of Dr. Neda Ladbon-Bernasconi and Dr. Andrea Bernasconi. There, he solidified his passion for studying epilepsy through neuroimaging.

In this interview, Dr. Concha tells us about (1) how he got his start in research, (2) the advantages of translational research in the field of epilepsy, (3) his views on research cultures, and (4) how students can approach research to hone valuable skills that can drive new scientific questions.

At OHBM 2024 in Seoul, Korea, Dr. Concha will present a Keynote Lecture on how he’s using diffusion MRI to temporal lobe epilepsy.