This news item is about: As a first-generation college student, when Robert López-Astacio first heard Dr. Colin Parrish give a talk at University of Puerto Rico-Ponce about his work on viral evolution, he had no idea that just a few years later he would be one of Dr. Parrish's graduate students, studying the deadly disease of dogs caused by canine parvovirus. Parrish had visited UPR-Ponce through the Research Training Initiative for Student Enhancement (RISE), an NIH-funded program to diversify the students entering biomedical research.