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Julio Cesar Hidalgo Lopez of Saint Joseph, Missouri, majored in neuroscience and pursued such multiple academic interests as nutrition and diet as tools for preventative medicine, robotics, human anatomy with an emphasis on neuroanatomy, and physiology.

A QuestBridge Scholar, he was president of W&L’s chapter of Alpha Epsilon Delta, the pre-health honor society, and co-president of Beta Beta Beta, the biological honor society. He cofounded the university’s Pre-Health Club and was a member of the Robotics Club. Active in the local community as well as the campus community, Julio worked with Campus Kitchen, was president of Catholic Campus Ministries, and served as a high school religious education teacher at Saint Patrick’s Catholic Church. He was a hospital volunteer at Lexington’s Carilion Stonewall Jackson Memorial Hospital and was president of the Swing Dance Club.

During the summer prior to his first year at the university, Julio worked on drone autonomy and computerized flight simulation with W&L Professor Simon Levy as part of the university’s Advanced Research Cohort Program. He spent two summers conducting research with W&L Professor Fiona Watson on mechanisms of central nervous system regeneration and neurodevelopmental effects of pesticide exposure in Xenopus laevis frogs. He also spent a summer on a self-designed intensive physician shadowing experience primarily in St. Louis, Missouri, where he logged 173 shadowing hours, including 96 hours in operating rooms. He was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Undergraduate Research Fellow in 2017 and earned a Gilday-Roberts Student Internship Grant in 2019.

Julio plans to attend Emory University School of Medicine this fall. He hopes to participate in Doctors Without Borders, a non-profit NGO, to work with underserved populations.

Sources: university file, personal information
Written by: Jeff Hanna, jhanna@wlu.edu
Updated: May 29, 2020