Dr. Bautista grew up in the inner city of Chicago. She is the first member of her family to graduate high school and attend college. She was initially a fine arts major but became interested in biology and chemistry after attending a public hearing in Chicago about dioxin in the Great Lakes. She then moved to Eugene, Oregon, took community college classes and worked full time so that she could transfer to the University of Oregon. She received her Bachelors degree in Biology from the University of Oregon in 1995, her Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Stanford University in 2002 and was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, San Francisco from 2002-2007. She joined the faculty at UC Berkeley in 2008. Dr. Bautista’s lab studies the molecular mechanisms of itch, touch and pain.