The researcher who led the innovative investigation into the waters of the Riachuelo River was born in this capital, studied at the Industrial School and graduated from the FBCB. Play in CRAI. Today he is an “adopted Portino”, but he does not forget his hometown.
“All that we achieved thanks to the excellent training that the college and the state university gave us,” assures the virologist. credit: courtesy
“Did you see that they say history is circular? Well: I belong to a very particular generation of researchers, the generation of the nineties. Although I went to study in the United States, I came back, paradoxically, back when I arrived the country was going through a very severe crisis. You can’t Get a job,” recalls Daniel Cisterna, 56, the Santa Fe researcher who led a study that allowed the discovery of two viruses of human origin in the murky waters of Buenos Aires Riachuelo. Certainly: he alluded to the fact that at that point in Argentina’s history the so-called “brain drain” was taking place.
He then insists: “I joined a generation of biochemists from the FBCB, many of them from Santa Fe but also from Entre Ríos, who were of great value. All my colleagues, as far as I know, have done a very good job, and all thanks to the excellent training I have given. US college and state university ”, emphasizes the virologist.
El Riachuelo … Far away, there is the romanticization of that mirror of water that formed the founding myths of Portino, the first port with an “acre mooring where ships that will always remain at the dock”; Or the oil paintings and Figure Heads by Quinquela Martin. Today, for the Malbrán scholar, Riachuelo is a subject of study and analysis.
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A story from that time
Cisterna was born in Av. Freyre and Suipacha, near Parque Garay and five blocks from the Unión court. He studied at the Escuela Industrial Superior (EIS), where he graduated as a chemical technician, and his great colleague there is today the president of UNL: Enrique Mammarella. Cisterna took off in biochemistry, and there he ended up at FBCB-UNL. MORE: He played a decade at CRAI, 14-24 years old.
His emotional memory is activated again. “I studied with Dr. Juan Daniel Claus,” he recalls. Today, Klaus is a college professor and a famous local virologist, whom El Littoral has interviewed on several occasions about SARS-CoV-2. “When I got to the Faculty of Biochemistry, we did not have virology as a subject, and it was (by Claus) who began to dictate this chair. Thanks to him I fell in love with this discipline”, admits Cisterna.
Another fellow Santa Fe who inspired him in his career is Dr. Jeronimo Cello, who also taught at Industrial and FBCB-UNL. “Then he arrived at the Malbrán Institute and after that, he traveled to Sweden for his Ph.D. Today he is based in the United States. His brother César was my instructor at CRAI.” Cisterna also fondly remembers Dr. Emilce Méndez, a renowned microbiologist at the FBCB. “Thanks to her and the inspiration she gave me, I got to Malbrán,” he thanks him.
Then he went to Buenos Aires to become a Doctor of Biochemistry at UBA. He had been living there for nearly three decades in the independent city of Buenos Aires: he made his life there and built a family. Daniel Cisterna is indeed an “adoptive portino,” but he hasn’t forgotten his origins.
