Raquel Arévalo Jiménez, Biologist with a Master degree in Human Fertility

Raquel is working as a Junior Embryologist. Even though she is currently working and living in Ireland, she is from Spain, specifically from Mallorca where she studied the degree of Biology in the University of Balearic Island. Raquel always had an interest in human biology and health care, for that reason she focused on her degree in health biology. Specifically human reproduction, genetics and nutrition have always been her main interests.
However, living very close to an IVF process in her family, she started to be very interested in the world of human reproduction and she decided to study a master degree in Human Fertility in order to be able to help people in the hard journey of having a baby. Moreover, Raquel have done multiple courses to try to acquire more knowledge and be a better professional.
She began her training in andrology and embryology laboratories during her master degree and had the opportunity to learn from professionals from hospitals in Valencia and Mallorca. Having the desire to improve and become an embryologist, last year Raquel moved to Madrid where she was trained for 1 year in the andrology and embryology laboratory. 
Finally, this year she had the opportunity to work abroad and without any doubts, she left Spain and came to Galway following her dream of becoming an embryologist. 
Raquel is biologist, musician and ballet dancer and she likes to combine science and art to give a different vision to life.
What she likes the most in this job is that they are not only working with patients, cells, embryos or sperm, in this job they are actually working and dealing with dreams, wishes, feelings and the future of a family or a baby. Investing her time, effort and desire day-to-day to make people happier in her opinion is one of the best things in life. 

Moreover, it is very enriching to see how you can create life and make the dreams of other people come true. Despite realising how beautiful and tender that job is, you also realize how hard and frustrating human biology can be. However, every day, month and year invested in that work is worth its weight in gold.

Sometimes it is difficult to know what you want to be when you grow up. It is also tough to answer in what do you want to dedicate and invest all your time, and what will fill your life and make you happy. Fortunately, despite her young age she can say without any doubt that she have discovered that in which she want to invest all her time and effort and work for it. And that is human embryology.