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Ximena is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Ophthalmology at Stanford University. She completed her undergraduate studies in Biology at Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. She obtained her M.Sc. in Neuroscience from the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, and her Ph.D. in Genetics from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, studying the roles of the neural stem cell transcription factor NR2E1 in retinal development. She then joined the National Eye Institute to study the epigenetic control of development and aging in rod photoreceptors, the retina's primary light-sensing neurons. Supported by a K99 career development award, she later focused on how RNA-binding proteins regulate gene expression in photoreceptors. In her lab, Ximena investigates how RNA-binding proteins and regulatory RNAs function in retinal development, aging, and disease to identify new therapeutic strategies to combat neurodegeneration and vision loss.