Major Fernando Emilio Rodríguez Vargas, DDS
Fernando Emilio Rodríguez Vargas was born on February 24th, 1888, in Adjuntas, Puerto Rico and traveled daily to Ponce for his early education. He received his Teaching Certificate at the University of Puerto Rico, before working at the IRS an inspector, and then the US War Department as a translator. He obtained his DDS (1913) […]
Lydia Villa-Komaroff, PhD
Dr. Lydia Villa-Komaroff was born on August 7, 1947, in Las Vegas but grew up Santa Fe, New Mexico after her parents immigrated to the United States to escape the Mexican Revolution. At a young age, she knew she wanted to be a scientist. Initially she enrolled at University of Washington to study Chemisty, but […]
Severo Ochoa, MD
Severo Ochoa (1905-1993) was a biochemist that was born in Laurca, Spain. His interest in biology was sparked by Spanish Nobel Laureate Santiago Ramón y Cajal through his studies on the structure of the nervous system. He obtained his Medical Degree with honors (1929) from the University of Madrid. During this time he worked on the isolation […]
Anabella Villalobos, PhD
Dr. Anabella Villalobos is a medicinal chemist and currently a Senior Vice President, Biotherapeutics & Medicinal Sciences at Biogen. Born and raised in Panama, she found her spark and excitement for chemistry in a high school organic chemistry class. She obtained her BS (1981) in Chemistry from the University of Panama. She obtained a MS […]
Scarlin Hernandez
Scarlin Hernandez is a Dominican-American astronautical engineer for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. She was born in the Dominican Republic, then moved to Brooklyn, NY at the age of 4. She earned her BS in Computer Engineering from Capitol Technology University (CTU) in Laurel, MD. Her undergraduate studies were funded by a full scholarship from […]
Pedro A. Sanchez, PhD
Dr. Pedro A. Sanchez was born in Cuba and grew to have an immediate attachment to soil as he said he would “play with dirt” when he was younger. As his family owned a fertilizer-blending business they encouraged his pursuits. Pedro obtained a BS (1962), MS, and PhD (1968) in Soil Sciences at Cornell University, […]
Eugene Cota-Robles, PhD
Dr. Eugene V. Cota-Robles was born on July 13, 1926 in Nogales, Arizona, to Mexican immigrant school teachers from Pueblo Nuevo, Sonora, Mexico. In 1944 he enlisted for the U.S. Navy, serving as a signalman aboard the U.S.S. Baltimore during World War II. After being discharged he received his BS (1950) in Bacteriology from the […]
Susana López Charretón, PhD
Dr. Susana López Charretón is a virologist studying rotaviruses. She was born in Mexico City in 1957, and knew she wanted to be a scientist from a young age. As a child she did experiments on frozen flies and lizards. She took this curiosity and love of science with her in her education at the […]
Sarah Elizabeth Stewart, MD, PhD
Dr. Sara Elizabeth Stewart, born in Tecalitlán, Jalisco, Mexico in 1905, was a researcher who pioneered the field of viral oncology. Her father was an American mining engineer and her mother was Mexican. To escape the Mexican revolution, her family moved to the United States in 1911. She received two Bachelor’s degrees (1927) in Home […]
Ildaura Murillo-Rohde, PhD, RN, FAAN
Dr. Ildaura Murillo-Rohde was born in Panama in 1920 before immigrating to San Antonio, Texas, in 1945. She earned a nursing diploma from San Antonio’s Medical and Surgical Hospital School of Nursing (1948). There she began to recognize the disproportionately low number of Hispanic nurses and found that it impacted care delivery for Hispanic patients. […]