Anthony Franco was determined to attend the University of California at Berkeley even though it meant he faced financial and academic challenges compared to his peers. Fortunately, he overcame these obstacles right away thanks to the Level Playing Field Institute (LPFI), a nonprofit organization based in San Francisco that seeks to ensure fairness in higher education and the workplace. The Initia...
For a Jamaican, Cosmo Fraser [pictured left] has an unusual first name. His mother had honored the request of their English family doctor named Cosmo Harvey to name her son after him. "My family had respect for him, ... and in Jamaica respect goes a long way," Fraser explains. Little did anyone expect that Fraser would take up more than the doctor's name. Years later, Fraser became a physician-sc...
Once in a while, at informal gatherings, Francisco Samaniego (pictured left) notices an unmistakable cringe in people's faces when they learn that he is a statistician. But he wouldn't change his career for anything. For more than three decades, Samaniego has been doing his dream job as a statistics professor at the University of California-Davis (UCD). He has inspired several students to take on...
Frederick Moore and Michael Penn never seriously considered a career in science when they were young. But later, not only were they part of the elite group of graduate students at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), they were among few minorities in their programs. Upon realizing the lack of diversity in science, Moore and Penn established the nonprofit organization Brothers Build...
Before finishing her Ph.D. in math at the University of California, Berkeley (UCB), Concha Gómez (pictured left) envisioned her dream job: "I would be in a large research university and teach math and be around mathematicians. But my job would be to focus on students of color in science." Five years later, that's precisely her role at the University of Wisconsin, Madison (UWM). Gómez is not only ...
When Traci Powell (pictured left) was 19 years old, she was diagnosed with Friedreich's ataxia, an inherited neurological disorder that weakened her muscles. Because of her condition, she was unable to participate fully in many of her college laboratory courses. Weak muscles in her eyes, head, and neck made using even a microscope laborious. Yet, Powell found ways to learn concepts she missed in ...
When Marigold Linton was young, she dreamt about becoming a significant figure in the Native American community. In this dream, she was an adult, taller and more powerful than everyone else in her family. More than 50 years later, one can easily say that Linton's dream came true. As one of the first American Indians who obtained a Ph.D. in science, Linton (pictured at left) has accomplished much ...
Studying infectious diseases is not necessarily a deadly task. Take it from Gerardo Chowell-Puente (pictured left), a Ph.D. candidate in biometry at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. In hopes of better managing diseases, such as influenza and mad cow (bovine spongiform encephalopathy), Chowell-Puente uses mathematical and computational models to identify and study the mechanisms involved in...
Inspired by Jacques Cousteau TV specials and sea adventure books, Dawn Wright (pictured left) dreamt about becoming a pirate or an ocean explorer. Years later, Wright realized her dream of becoming an oceanographer and found herself inside the deep-sea submersible, Alvin, examining recent volcano eruptions along the Juan de Fuca Ridge off the Northwest Coast. She also helped create a seafloor map...
Contemplating a marine science career, Warner Ithier-Guzmán took a 5-month break from his bachelor's program in biology at InterAmerican University of Puerto Rico to participate in the Minorities in Marine Science Undergraduate Program (MIMSUP) at Western Washington University's Shannon Point Marine Center (SPMC). The program exposed him to a range of marine science professions and taught him man...
In the mid-1990's Mark Muktoyuk, a native Alaskan, considered pursuing a civil engineering degree at Oregon State University (OSU). He could've explored career opportunities in the field on his own, but most people who go that route end up inadequately informed. Fortunately, Muktoyuk chose to take advantage of the Native Americans in Marine and Space Sciences (NAMSS) Program, a special effort by ...
When John Bear became Dean of the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics at the University of Houston (UH) in 1992, one of his goals was to diversify the school. But while searching for minority faculty, Bear realized how daunting his task was. "There was an extremely small pool of people out there to choose from," he recalled. The Houston-Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation ( H...
Michael Running Wolf (pictured left) has had a relatively smooth ride in his quest for a master's degree in computer science at Montana State University (MSU) in Bozeman. It's not that he didn't have struggles; he did. But his talent, passion, and dedication to serving the Native American community have kept him on track. The modest Running Wolf gives his department, family, and friends most of t...
To increase Hispanic communities' interest in science, Joaquin Ruiz of the University of Arizona (UA) and Radio Universidad's Ana Romo-Lucero have been nurturing a science radio show for youngsters in Spanish. They were unsure of how well it would be received, but after nearly a year on the air, the show has positively impacted many lives. ¡Hablemos Ciencia! (Let's Talk Science!) On Sundays from ...
Science is not foreign to Native American cultures; in fact, it has been part of American Indians' ways of life for thousands of years. In recognizing this, Jerry Elliott, an Osage-Cherokee, has stayed true to his culture throughout his 39 years as a physicist at NASA. He considers his work a spiritual quest to understand the world in which we live. In doing so, he has made great strides not only...
Olufemi Taiwo, a ninth grader at Lakota Freshman High School in West Chester, Ohio, has discovered an interest in science for the first time. Olivia Anderson, a seventh grader from Princeton Community Middle School in Cincinnati, Ohio, has improved her study habits and her grades, in the process gaining confidence that she can have a bright future if she works hard at it. Taiwo and Anderson are b...
You might say that Lori Arviso Alvord (pictured left) was predestined to become a doctor. According to a Navajo tradition, parents bury their newborn's placenta and umbilical cord at a special site that represents their dreams for the child. Because Alvord's father was stationed at a military base in Tacoma, Washington, Alvord was born at one of the local hospitals, and there her placenta remaine...
BACK TO THE FEATURE INDEX What happens to scientists when they leave their jobs to tend a major illness or injury? As three women scientists found out, the time away can take its toll. After 12-and-a-half years away from physics due to injuries suffered in a car accident, Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) physicist Deborah Jackson sometimes found it difficult to find funding for her projects after ...
Publishing research findings in peer-reviewed journals is an important part of being a scientist. That's why Imran Babar (pictured left), one of the 6 recipients of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's (HHMI) Gilliam Graduate Fellowship, was elated to be listed as a co-author of not one but two articles published in June of this year, both of them in top journals. What's really impressive about ...
