Helping Underrepresented Students Move Up the Socioeconomic Ladder : Dr. Robert Fernandez

In this episode, I chatted with Dr. Robert Fernandez, the Executive Director of Cientifico Latino, and a United States Obama Leaders for the Obama Foundation Leaders USA Program. He is a former PD Soros Fellow and a former undocumented immigrant who once had a dream of becoming a scientist. His dreams have become a reality, and he is now helping historically marginalized students access higher education in the sciences!

Transcription

Transcribed by Julissa Larios (she/her)

JP Flores (he/him): All right, Robert. So let’s start with short autobiography. Can you tell me you know, your name, your educational journey, where you are now and what you’ve been up to?

Robert Fernandez (he/him): Sure, so I born in Lima Peru. I grew up in the United States, specifically in Elizabeth, New Jersey. So my parents and I, we went to the US when I was four years old, and I didn’t notice until I was applying to colleges in my senior year of high school, but I was undocumented. So I was an undocumented immigrant for I would say 20 years. So I went to high school in New Jersey. Back then, because my parents weren’t familiar with the US education system. I didn’t know there were such a thing as like college application deadlines. So I kind of missed like the main deadlines and I, I lucked at that one day there was a community college representative who stopped by, passing out forms for the community college and that’s like okay. I can go to community college. I remember receiving that form and so I am filling it out and it had something called a social security number. I remember calling my mom and I was like Ma, cual es mi social? Where’s my social? I am applying college. She was like, oh tu no tienes uno hijo, like, you don’t have one. So that’s kind of when it sunk in that I was undocumented, but I just left it blank.

I applied and I got into Community College, so I went to Union Community College in Cranford, New Jersey. Originally, I was a business administration major. So just because back then, I kind of saw it like, I wasn’t really exposed to science or any role models as scientists. All I knew is like, I need to get a job, and I to take care of the family. So let me go into business. So, I majored in business administration for two years. My last year of community college. I was given the choice between an elective in biology or in astronomy, so I ended choosing biology and it was taught by a professor called Dr. Felton who really introduced the concepts of evolution and just general biology. And to me, I, I found like I really enjoyed the class. I enjoyed her mentorship or teaching styles and this kind of like, like it kind flipped a switch where like I, I really wanted to see where this goes. So I ended up doing an independent study on evolution with Dr. Felton, which was like a lit research review on like common misconceptions about the theory of evolution for arguments for and against, and when I finished community college, at time, this is before DACA. So I only knew about, like from newspaper clippings, of like oh undocumented student accepted to Harvard or Princeton and there was an undocumented student at Union Community College and we kind of how shared information on what we knew about each other’s status and what, when, pretty much is our pathway for education. So he told me that okay Brown and Colombia, they accepted undocumented students in the past who were transfer students. You should apply, I did, got rejected by both and then he told me that the Cuny system accepted some undocumented students. So, with that, I think at age of 19, after I finished community college, I moved to New York pretty with pretty much no more than 400 dollars for first month’s rent and I went, I was in Flushing Queens for roughly a year, did a lot of odd jobs for a year. I enrolled part-time in Queens College, but to be honest the tuition was out state. So I really couldn’t afford it. I barely afforded the class.

But in the meantime, I kind took that year to just work. And then when I finally got in state tuition, that’s when I was able to qualify. Well, in state tutiton for being there for a year. So I transferred to York college CUNY. And here is kind of where everything really excelled for me. So, here I told myself. Okay. I’m going to major in biotechnology. I, I was still working at a deli full-time pretty much from like 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. And I, that first semester I did well academically, but I was very very tired because the hours, but then at some point I met a friend of mine who needed help with some STEM courses and you know, I tutored him and exchanged kind of like a place to sleep so that kind of helped out with with rent. But at, at a time I, one day I was thinking about biology laboratory course and Professor Dr. Simon, I think she’s at the University of Western Ontario right now, but previously she was at York college. She’d asked one day if I thought about doing research and I said sure and I went to her office she talked about her research studying social behavior of fruit flies and I didn’t know what exactly a research career consisted off. But I knew maybe this can kind help me with my undocumented status if I work hard, but I also kind want to see where this goes. So I worked in Dr. Simon’s lab for two years. We published a first author paper and some collaborations studying how particularly. So fruit flies when they’re stressed, they release these stress odor telling other fruit flies to avoid them. So my role is, does the dopamine play a role in that social avoidance behavior?

And sure, the answer is no, but at I learned a lot from that experience and from that experience to kind of led to like a domino effect of her mentoring me, led to other professors mentoring me as well. But I received a lot of support from the biology and the physics department at York and I ended going to like, I think it was like a preview weekend at Brown University. I went to my first ever conference. I did a research program at Princeton and I went from not knowing what a PhD was to learning what a PhD is and that it’s funded. So I ended up applying, I want to say maybe to 10 programs at a time. I get in half of them and I decided to go to Yale. So I was coming from biotechnology major and the Yale PhD program I applied to was in Biochemistry, Biophysics and Structural Biology at the time at least that’s what it was called and I only took one biochemistry class. So it was not a good match, but I kind of wanted to see how well I can strive there. So even though that interview weekend, I understood pretty much nothing from the poster sessions from the other students. I, I did notice how passionate the professors were, that they really took an interest in the students applying to the program and to me that told me okay. They look like they really care about mentoring. So even if I don’t understand the material and don’t know this is the environment that I might strive in. I kind want see how far I can make it in this environment.

So, I did a PhD at Yale in Molecular Biophysics in the Biochemistry Department. I worked in the lab with Dr. Michael Cole at Yale. And I would say Yale, It’s always a bit of a journey, where I was the only Latino in my incoming year, maybe one of three out of like seven years. So, it, definitely not a lot of representation, but they did improve it over time. But I kind of like to think of my time at Yale as like my first semester, obviously because, after some representation, imposter syndrome, I didn’t do so well academically. So I pretty much got an F and all C’s until I kind of learned to ask for help and then I did much better. So I went from like C’s to B’s and then to an A and then I passed my (inaudible) and then I got a national Fellowship called the PD Soros Fellowship, but I would say all of that changed when I felt comfortable asking for help whether it was the instructors or the TA, where back then I didn’t want ask help because I didn’t want to think oh, of course he’s Latino, he needs help, extra help and I kind of had to get out of my comfort zone. But yeah, I did, but I would say my time at Yale I like to sum it up as like my first years, like I don’t think I belong here. My second to third years, like I’m starting to think that I belong here and then as time progresses, like it’s not enough for me to belong here, but I want others like me to belong here. So I kind of took part of like diversity initiatives to, to recruit more students from underrepresented backgrounds and when I finished my PhD. I’m currently a Junior Simons fellow or a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University. And right now, I’m just wrapping up my postdoc, and I’m going to be leading Científico Latino, organization that I started full-time.

JP Flores (he/him): Yes, and I’m very excited to talk to you more about that organization. But before we do, I, there’s a lot of questions I want to ask you so hopefully we can be done by this hour that comes up, but would you mind painting a picture of, you know, who you are like, were you raises as someone whose parents, you know, were pressuring to get into higher education so that?

Robert Fernandez (he/him): No.

JP Flores (he/him): No. Okay, so I had an experience where like my parents are immigrants from the Philippines and they were like, you need to become a doctor so that you can make money and, and, you know go into this career so you can give us, you can help us later. So I just wanted quickly ask about if that was something that you, you

Robert Fernandez (he/him): Yeah, I mean my mom works at a factory. My dad works in fast food. They never, not necessarily, like, oh you have be a doctor or a lawyer. I think most of my time. Growing up, I was pretty much raised by my a mom, as a single mom, and she never really pressured me to go down one path or the other. Rather, just like the value education is important.

JP Flores (he/him): Right, awesome. So how did keep yourself motivated during all of this? Right? Like I’m sure you may have faced burnout at some point. Like, did you take breaks or were you more the type person that was like no, I’m gonna, I’m gonna power through and and ask for help and see what happens.

Robert Fernandez (he/him): In college or in grad school?

JP Flores (he/him): Um, I think both. I, I’d be curious to know your strategies in both.

Robert Fernandez (he/him): I guess in, in college I was undocumented, so I had no choice. So that was kind like my own switch. Like I, I was in a situation that I couldn’t control and for me the only way out of situation was to work hard and hopefully get recognized by my work. Unfortunately, that never happened, which is fine because that’s not how, unless like someone’s sponsoring you from a job which you know, I, grad schools, you know, but I did luck out where my aunt petitioned for my dad and that’s what we got citizenship, but I would say at my motivation back then in college was like I need to work really hard to show that I belong here, even if I don’t have papers. So that was my big motivation. In grad school, that was very different because I I no longer was in that situation, so I had to, yeah, I guess. It’s, It’s kind of hard just because I know when I, when I first started my first year, I I felt very isolated because like lack of community, lack of representation and my main motivation was gone as well because back then it was the papers,you know?

JP Flores (he/him): Right. Right.

Robert Fernandez (he/him): I kind had to rewire myself in way that I am kind of doing this for my parents sacrifices, but also for the community that I’m to uplift so I think that’s kind of what really like put a switch in me around my second and third year, that like my parents got this far. I don’t want it to be all for nothing. So even though things are tough, I should continue pushing through just because I like thinking of like if you’re in hell, why stay in hell just continue walking through the difficult path and then at some point, it’s gonna be over. So I did much, but then my new motivation around my fourth year, and on, was I started mentoring a lot of students, so kind told myself like I, I want make sure that they feel like they belong here. So even if I don’t feel like I, like I do, I need to make space for them to do. So I started a lot of mentorship, community outreach, and for me helping my students was kind of, a way for me to channel like my imposter syndrome, that I don’t belong here, I don’t have time to think about that because I need to help them. So for me, that’s kind of what, what did, what I guess did it for me. But I would say that was my my main motivation in grad school was like making things better for my students and my community overall.

JP Flores (he/him): Cool. Yeah. Can tell us more about that? So what do you think are the practices that helped your mentees the most when you were a mentor because when when we talk about sense of belonging that can mean a different things for different people. So can just share some like nuggets of advice, for like how to actually cultivate belongingness in a lab.

Robert Fernandez (he/him): Yeah, so I guess in the workplace. I kind of, I kind of learned this from one of my first students in grad school. That my career ambitions are not the as my students career ambitions. So I kind of made the mistake at first were I knew what guided me to grad school and when I had my first student I wanted to make sure that they had access to all of the resources, summer programs, diversity preview weekend, etc. But that wasn’t their motivation at all and that’s fine. So I had to learn what is, what is it that they are interested in. So they were particularly interested in doing an MD MBA, and I’m like, okay. I have no experience with that. But I have a colleague of mine who does, so let connect you with that colleague and she can tell you about her experience doing an MD MBA and hopefully that can help you, motivate, that guide you on your way. So that’s kind one of the first lessons I learned, that don’t, like mentoring is not replicating or mentoring a mini version of you. You can make your sure that student has the guidance to succeed in whatever career path they choose and my second student was med school focused. So I, I was like, okay great. Now I have strategy for those who are interested in med school, connect them with those who in the med school and then guidance for (inaudible) med school. I even learn a little bit more about the medical school admissions process, so I can better help my students and all of them worked really hard in the lab, and contributed as co authors on my paper, but I kind of learned that you have to learn to adaptable.

JP Flores (he/him): Yeah. Definitely. So now that you’ve gained all these like mentorship skills and you know you are a postdoc now, is there any advice you would have given yourself early on in your career that would have helped you?

Robert Fernandez (he/him): That’s a good question, I guess, Let’s see. Like help me, in what sense?

JP Flores (he/him): Anything, right? It could have been career wise. It could have been just like a quote that you tell your mentees now that really like motivates you. Just anything that you wish you would have known.

Robert Fernandez (he/him): Oh, yeah. Okay, I guess for me, work life balance.

JP Flores (he/him): Yeah.

Robert Fernandez (he/him): Back in (inaudible) school. I used to work a lot of hours excessively. Not because my advisor told me I should work more hours, but kind of thought. Personally, I was like, I’m in here to learn. I need to work really hard to make sure these experiments, or these papers, or these grants, or whatever needs to get done because I’m investing in my future which is true. But also that’s also something that leads to burn out, that I guess for me for a long time I kind of thought of like being a scientist as my identity, but the the drawback of that is when things aren’t working in the bench, that’s not reflection on you. That’s a reflection of things not working in the bench, you know, experiments fail. So I kind of learned to separate that identity from me. Being a scientist is and was one of my identities by and but, it’s not the only thing. So for me, I am nowadays taking work-life balance more seriously.

JP Flores (he/him): Yeah, what is it? What does that look like for you? Like do you kind of you know go out with your communities wherever you’re at and just party or like what is your, what is your me, What is your interpretation of like the life part of work life balance?

Robert Fernandez (he/him): Yeah, I think for me, I treat science as like a nine-to-five, these days where I go in to do my experiments and when my experiments are done, I’m not gonna sit in a lab and pretend to read papers, no I am going to go home because that time I can use to work on my scientific outreach work or connect with my family. Like I, I put family on hold for many years because of grad school. I’m no longer doing that again. It’s like it’s a thing, seeing your cousins when they were like in high school and now they are adults.

JP Flores (he/him): Yeah.

Robert Fernandez (he/him): All because of a PhD, not enough time to spend with them. So for me, work like balance means I’m trying spend more time with my family and extended family. My friends, learn new hobbies and that’s something I’m doing for me and if, the good thing at least for my postdoc funding is I am self funded. I, I can you know, freedom to do what I what I want, but you know, the experiments, they get done and also my mental well-being is important as well.

JP Flores (he/him): Yeah. So how integral has, have communities been for your your mental well-being right? Like a lot of people talk about finding their communities in science. Did you find any throughout the course of your career? Do you still keep in contact with your community in science from undergrad? Like, how important has that been? The support.

Robert Fernandez (he/him): I would say, for me it would have been in grad school.

JP Flores (he/him): Yeah.

Robert Fernandez (he/him): Roughly around my fourth year of grad school, where I met other underrepresented students across different departments again, like I, you know, I, my previous department wasn’t that diverse, it took years, but you know, they made efforts but I kind of learned that my community shouldn’t be my department. My department is my department. And if I find don’t find community where my department, I should find my community across different departments, across different schools. And that’s kind how I, I made good friends with those in, let’s say cell biology or neuroscience. I am tight with my biochemistry department. Even in law school, like so many good friends at Yale that I I still remember fondly and I, I had to take the initiative to find this community and along the lines this community was very instrumental where let’s say, we’re all experiencing something that happened at the institution or in a lab and we made a space for us to share what’s going on in our lives, how to navigate it, but also to help each other with our STEM Outreach and DEI activities and and also just celebrate each other as well or you know go out to dinner and and just get to know each other better and for me, I, that’s something that I really value that and I still think fondly for my time at Yale.

JP Flores (he/him): Cool, so before we get into Científico Latino, I wanted to ask you one more thing. So how do think we can diversify STEM and implement actual initiatives that better support and empower students from underrepresented backgrounds in academia, right? Because it’s one thing to do all this work on the side, but I think academic institutions need to do a better job of making sure those systems are in place at their you know, in their system. Or would you agree or disagree? Because it can be, it can be really (inaudible).

Robert Fernandez (he/him): That’s, that’s true. But I think, I personally think, it’s the institutions were not made for underrepresented students. So it’s like we’re doing all this work of moving the pipeline on representation from the college to the grad school level. But then once they’re in grad school, the experience so many different obstacles. They are very toxic PIs, toxic environments, absence of community, absence of representation. No funding. There’s colleague of mine who literally had a go to food shelters to like have food because of grad schools’ stipend isn’t enough, unaffordable housing. I think at the academia level, a lot of changes need to be made. I think PhD students should be paid ridiculously more, at least twice of what they are currently making so they could actually have a good living and not have to think about when my next meal is or like budget very tightly. I also think that students in grad school should be paid for their time improving diversity, inclusion in departments and STEM outreach work as well. A lot of students are asking to be on these DEI committees and in the end some of the DEI committees are just talking and no action and you’re still students, still investing their time to try to improve the climate of the department, but it’s, it’s they’re not being paid for this. So it’s for some underrepresented students they have to navigate this new environment, doing research, being unpaid for their work in addition to everything else on their personal life.

So, I think, summing up, I would say increase stipends for graduate students, paying students for DEI and STEM outreach activities, having mentorship programs for first-year grad students to help them navigate that difficult first year of grad school. Also like awards for DEI and STEM outreach. Recognize the students who are doing this work as well. And I also think overall the PhD should be re-examined where I do understand nowadays, it’s not like how you used to where most people are applying to be a professor. Now with a PhD you go into academia, biotech consulting, law, etc. But I do think the PhD system has not reflected that, where if they’re interested in a research career maybe they should stay in a PhD for three to four years instead of five to seven years. They get their paper to work in a lab and then it moves them forward. If they’re interested in biotech or consulting, they still take the courses, and the research, but they should be able to have professional development courses that can prepare them for that career. A of students go into biotech or pharmacy or consulting and they kind of have to do, they have to look for their own avenues of how to gain these skills. These are not taught in the apartment. So I think the PhD system really has to change.

JP Flores (he/him): Yeah. Do you of any programs that doing it right or headed it in the direction? Because that’s a, that’s a conversation we have at UNC a lot, right? It’s like, how can we reimagine the way that we are training our graduate students, so that, they are in an optimal position for the careers, right?

Robert Fernandez (he/him): Yeah, the the only ones, not, not all the changes that I’ve talked about, but ones that do have support for underrepresented students. I think it’s Duke BioCoRE. Yale started a YBDIC program to support first year grad students, I am sorry, they recruit underrepresented students. They also empower them. Well, (inaudible) lecture series or community building events and they focus on career investment as well. I want to say those are the only two on the top of my head. I’m sure there are other type of mentorship programs or community engagement programs for underrepresented students, but I haven’t seen any that, that has gone as drastic as the lens that I mentioned.

JP Flores (he/him): Yeah, another conversation that we have a lot is, is you know, the mention of the toxic PIs and toxic environment. Do you think training is enough to do that? or do you think we could be more innovative in how, you know, we can get PIs to really care about incoming students, especially those from underrepresented backgrounds?

Robert Fernandez (he/him): Yeah, honestly, I think you have to take away the funding. That’s the only way.

JP Flores (he/him): Yeah, because then you can’t do anything if they take away

Robert Fernandez (he/him): Exactly. If the students who are with toxic PIs, students should be able to submit evaluations about the PIs that they work under to either the chair or a funding agency, in order for those students not to feel that they’re stuck in a difficult and environment. I unfortunately

JP Flores (he/him): Yeah.

Robert Fernandez (he/him): Had colleagues who were, had to live through difficult environments for four to five years just to like push it through, but if, if. I think it would better if the PhD stipend was focused on the student, that way, they can move their money around and it’s not dependent on the PI’s grant.

JP Flores (he/him): Yeah.

Robert Fernandez (he/him): Or the Department’s funding. like it should be their own funding, kind of like a fellowship, you know, should be like

JP Flores (he/him): Right, right.

Robert Fernandez (he/him): They have the freedom to go from lab to lab but also PIs who are, whose Postdocs or whose students are leaving their lab, where I am not in a good place, because of their mentorship style. They should definitely have their funding taken away or difficult for them to get their budgets approved. Like there has to be some kind of consequences for these PIs. It’s

JP Flores (he/him): Yeah, it’s so funny because whenever, whenever I tell them, whenever I talk to my friends about this that are outside of science, they’re always like, why don’t you just go to HR? and like there’s no HR

Robert Fernandez (he/him): Yeah. That’s true, and even if you do, it’s like, what are they gonna do?

JP Flores (he/him): Exactly.

Robert Fernandez (he/him): Yeah. That’s true that there is no HR for grad students. It’s like so, it’s like so we are not, so they’re not employees, but they’re expected to behave as employees, but they don’t have the rights as employees.

JP Flores (he/him): Exactly. It’s, it’s ridiculous. I agree.Yeah. Is there anything else you want to talk about before we really talk about Científico Latino?

Robert Fernandez (he/him): No, I think we hit the main parts when it came to research.

JP Flores (he/him): Okay, cool. So I think one of many things you’re known for, is the creation of your organization. Can you tell us more about it? And, you know, how did you get the idea to make this happen? How hard was it to get it off the ground and running? and, you know, how hard is it to maintain? because this like a national, a national effort and you’re killing it, but I’m curious how you keep it up.

Robert Fernandez (he/him): Yeah, so I would say that Científico Latino, before it started. I met my Co-funder, Olivia Goldman, in a summer research program in 2012 at Princeton University and ever since that summer research program, we kind of kept in touch. I started grad school first. She went to grad school three years later and I think around, I want to say I think it was around maybe 2016 election. I think I was going to be a third or fourth year at the time. I knew that I wanted to do something to help my community more because back then all I did was just like a mentorship program for first year of grad students and maybe I was starting to do some mentoring but there, there, I wasn’t doing anything that was too impactful, at least for me.

So, at first, I kind of thought, well, you know, when I was starting off my first year of grad school, what areas of difficulties that I faced and what could have been different? like what resources could have been available? So, when I reached out to a couple of colleagues and Olivia was one of the people who got back to me and she liked the idea and then, you know, we started working together. So we pretty much first started off just as a website, compiling scholarships and fellowships, summer research programs, post bacc programs, diversity preview weekends, and some blogs interviewing students and scientists on different aspects on being a scientist and navigating academia and we kind of did that for two years. Around those two years, we were just a website for sharing resources. I got involved with this program at Yale called STARS. It funds underrepresented students and low income students to do paid research their last two years of college and from I was, I guess I would say technically I was the graduate student coordinator for that program. So I would, probably see students with their, so they will give research in progress talks. I will give a feedback on their work, on their posters, but I kind took it as further where I created a bunch of professional development workshops on applying to grad school, applying to post baccs, for summer programs, even applying to med school like recruiting people within community, like I have some of my students that are interested in med school, can I talk to you? can I about an MD-PhD. So from that experience, I remember we did get a couple of students accepted into some post bacc programs and summer programs. I think my, I think one of my highlights was seven of them ended up going to SACNAS and I think at least half of them won a travel award but I, from that experience, I kind of like motivated me, that I could make a difference. So I, I, around that time, I want to say it was, I think I was maybe a seventh year at the time and Científico Latino technically, it started 2017. And yeah, you know, that sounds right, 2017. I think it was my last year of grad school. And there was a first year grad student, Daisy Duane, who learned about Científico Latino and around that time we were just a website. We were scaling down and she was interested in contributing and helping us expand but around that time I was like, I’m trying to wrap up.

I want to leave and move on to my next step. But she was very motivated. So, the three of us kind got together like, okay, what can we do more than beyond a website? So this is kind of how we came up for the idea because of experience mentoring students, getting into a postbac and (inaudible) to grad school. We came up with our grad school initiative program. So at first we just developed a whole bunch of resources on applying a grad school, finding example statements, and, and then Olivia suggested, you know, first we should get recommenders. Let’s see how many mentors we can find through academia Twitter or (inaudible) the majority of them. So we had roughly maybe two to 300 mentors that first year. So then we had to recruit students so we kind of like emailed as many people as we can to try to promote this program to their students and we, the first year was just literally just a three of us running a cohort of roughly 100 or so students.

JP Flores (he/him): That’s wild.

Robert Fernandez (he/him): Webinars, check-ins, etc. But that first year I was okay, we we learned three people is not enough to run this whole thing. So we kind of learned how to structure our program better like, okay, something new in 2020 that we started doing is that we wanted to get feewaivers for our students. So I was like, okay, I’ll talk to the dean’s to negotiate some fee waivers. They see that our webinar series, Olivia let all of our social media, and then we had a program director at a time at the time Katia Maya, who joined, who managed the entire program. And then we also had people who helped out with different aspects of it. So and we, oh yeah, and then Melissa Cadena came that 2020 she led the mock interview part and and with that we kind of like separated our roles into different branches and we have volunteers under each branch. And then as we progress again in 2021, you know, we outlined responsibilities more now, we have a good structure. We had feewaiver partners. So we had a good system going, but around that time from 2019 to 2021. Everything was self funded. Whatever was my PhD stipend or my postdoc stipend. Back then, we didn’t receive any funding because we’re not a nonprofit.

JP Flores (he/him): Wait, wait wait, so sorry you were using your stipend?

Robert Fernandez (he/him): Yeah.

JP Flores (he/him): Like out of your pocket?!

Robert Fernandez (he/him): Yeah.

JP Flores (he/him): That is amazing. Wow. Okay.

Robert Fernandez (he/him): Yeah.

JP Flores (he/him): I was like what.

Robert Fernandez (he/him): Yeah. To like the zoom calls or website costs, whatever it cost.

JP Flores (he/him): Yeah, right. Right.

Robert Fernandez (he/him): Yeah, so, you know, it went from my PhD stipend, to my postdoc stipend just because we weren’t a nonprofit. We couldn’t get any funding for this.

JP Flores (he/him): Right,

Robert Fernandez (he/him): And it wasn’t until this past 2023 that, when we got a fiscal sponsor that we were able to actually get a grant to support our program for the first time, financially, and now this year we are transitioning into a non-profit. We still haven’t publicly announced it until probably over the summer, but we’re still doing the paperwork so we could become a 501(c)(3) hopefully by the end of summer.

JP Flores (he/him): That’s amazing.

Robert Fernandez (he/him): Apply for grants that can help us fund this program and other programs.

JP Flores (he/him): Yeah. So, how did you, how do you, how do you even find grants to apply for? because you just said you applied for grant and got it, right? so like fund, just for a little bit. But.

Robert Fernandez (he/him): Yeah.

JP Flores (he/him): Who finds stuff like that?

Robert Fernandez (he/him): Yeah, that’s a good question. To be honest, it was more of a network. I talked to a couple nonprofit directors who would tell me about, you should apply to these grants, but for me it it really happened because I was a Junior Simons fellow for the Simons Foundation.

JP Flores (he/him): Yeah.

Robert Fernandez (he/him): And, pretty much they funded three years of my postdoc research. So, I fond out that they had a science outreach division and a colleague of mine connected me with someone who connected me to someone else and I had a chance to pitch my GSMI program and they agreed to go give us funding for a year. And and that’s how we got our first source of funding for the GSMI program from the Simons.

JP Flores (he/him): That’s amazing. That’s amazing. So how hard is it to run now? How hard is it to run your organization? It sounds like have a lot of, you have a good structure now. So it seems like the, the work is evenly split amongst everyone. Is it still like hard to manage? What’s the, how does that look like?

Robert Fernandez (he/him): I think this past year, the work is very evenly split. We’ve added a couple new things since we started. So for example, every student a program originally, they have a mentor, access to grad school resources, access to mock interviews, webinars. Slack community full of scholarships, mentors, but what’s different now is that we started having personal statement reviewers who can give feedback on the students applications when a mentor is unable to. We had NSF GRFP Fellowship reviewers who can similarly give feedback on NSF GRFP for four students per reviewer. And we’ve been trying to implement more social community building activities, trying to expand our number of feewaiver partners.

Yeah, I think that’s kind of what has been our main focus and expanded type of webinars from different aspects of applying to grad school. I know we focus mainly in the biosciences, but we’re trying to focus more on chemistry, physics, astronomy.

JP Flores (he/him): Yeah. And that’s amazing. I, I also like how it’s a national effort. Like I’ve been in a couple organizations where depending on where group of people is, they’d like do meet ups. Like if you have a bunch of people in the Northeast, you get them all to meet up and hang out in like Central Park or something. So, that’s really cool. I love how y’all are expanding and stuff. So it clearly has been widely successful, right? In fact, there’s been multiple pieces about it in journals like Cell so like can you reflect a little bit on how awesome that is and you know, what was, what was said in those pieces and stuff.

Robert Fernandez (he/him): Yeah, yeah. I know, that, that one, I think we had, we were working on a manuscript for like a year.

JP Flores (he/him): Oh. Wow!

Robert Fernandez (he/him): Pretty much, it was like recapping our 20 GSMI and 2020 and 2021 program and how our program works. What are the obstacles for under possessed students applying to grad school? How did we intervene? What resources do we offer? How do we screen mentors? And how can universities adopt a model, if they want to replicate our system or if in general if they want to make grad school admissions more equitable, at different stages, from the lab side to the department side to the, the university. So I, yeah, so it’s kind of like pretty much like this is what we learned working on this program the last couple of years and these are things should take it to account when students are applying to grad school.

JP Flores (he/him): Yeah, that’s awesome. If you were to like, pitch your organization to like the NIH director, how would you pitch it?

Robert Fernandez (he/him): Yeah, I, I would say before I, I would always pitch it as we’re helping students from underrepresented backgrounds get access to higher education in the sciences, but now I’m kind of seeing it more as were helping students from underrepresented backgrounds move up the socioeconomic ladder through education.

JP Flores (he/him): Yeah.

Robert Fernandez (he/him): Just because I I’ve been seeing this moreand more were like, I know for me, before I started grad school. I was making, if I was lucky 10,000 or 15,000 dollars a year, but because of grad school, you know, I moved to 30, 35 and then postdoc 60 to 80. I, that’s definitely helping me with my career and also financial security. But in a way, higher education does lead to an increase in the social economic ladder and we’re trying to do this for students from low-income first-generation backgrounds as well.

So yes, we are helping you get into grad school, whether in the Sciences, whether it’s a Masters or PhD, but we’re hoping that’s just the first step as to progress, highering your education, and ideally up the socioeconomic ladder and we actually have seen a lot of our former mentees give back to their community. So, for example, some of them started their own mentorship program for application assistance. Yeah, at their respective universities, some did a high school to college pipeline for low income students in California, and we’re seeing students who were part our program, giving back to the community as well.

JP Flores (he/him): That’s awesome. Yeah, if I can, if I can do anything for you, let me know. That, this seems like an amazing organization. I think I’m on the newsletter actually, I’ve subscribed and I think y’all are looking for mentors. So I, I might have to finish that survey or something soon.

Robert Fernandez (he/him): Yeah, we, we do have a separate program called GSEC.

JP Flores (he/him): Yeah.

Robert Fernandez (he/him): So, in short that one, we’re focused on helping students their first year of grad school, navigate that first year of grad school through mentorship and community engagement and building.

JP Flores (he/him): Oh, wow. That’s really cool.Cool. Well, that’s all the serious questions I have, but I have three more fun questions if you still have some time.

Robert Fernandez (he/him): Yeah.

JP Flores (he/him): Cool. So, the first one is, what is your favorite song right now and why? Do you listen to a lot music or not?

Robert Fernandez (he/him): It’s more of like I know the songs, but I don’t.

JP Flores (he/him): I’m not gonna make you sing it live. Don’t worry. Or a favorite movie that you’ve seen lately.

Robert Fernandez (he/him): Oh, I think that a song would be better.

JP Flores (he/him): Sorry.

Robert Fernandez (he/him): I’m actually going to check my playlist.

JP Flores (he/him): Sure. Sure. What is your favorite thing to do outside of science?

Robert Fernandez (he/him): Yeah, definitely, outside of science. I pretty much hang out with my family and friends. So something I recently did was, I went to the, the Queens Science Museum with some nephews of mine just to try to get, and nieces to try to get them introduced into science. And then I really enjoyed that the exhibits there were not in English but they were so in Spanish as well, which I, I really enjoyed.

JP Flores (he/him): Yeah. Yeah, just sorry. I kind of want to pivot now. So, the, the having Spanish as a second language when you’re seeing you know, science stuff. Does your organization also incorporates science communication workshops because, because that’d very interesting, right? Like what if you had like the Nature’s news and views and all the like summary papers, what if those were translated in Spanish? Do you think that’d be helpful or no?

Robert Fernandez (he/him): Yeah, I definitely think that would be helpful and beneficial. Because as scientists, we kind of stay within our bubble and you know, we stay within the English language bubble. I would say, I don’t think that’s something that our organization can can do right now, but that’s something that we would love to expand hopefully maybe a couple years down the line.

JP Flores (he/him): Yeah. So what are your favorite places to eat at in Queens? Okay, Columbia is in Queens, right? Columbia or no? Where is Columbia University

Robert Fernandez (he/him): Columbia is in the upper west side. Yeah.

JP Flores (he/him): Okay. What are your favorite places to eat around there?

Robert Fernandez (he/him): I would say, oh definitely nothing around here.

JP Flores (he/him): That’s what I say too because I’m from LA and I’m like, everyone’s like, what do you like eating in North Carolina? And I’m like, I mean, there’s some good stuff. But.

Robert Fernandez (he/him): Yeah, no, I, no, I will have go to Queens to actually like get some good.

JP Flores (he/him): Yeah.

Robert Fernandez (he/him): Good food. Yeah, no, I’m trying to give you a good answer, but like no. I mean I guess if I to choose, some Korean barbecue spots.

JP Flores (he/him): Okay.

Robert Fernandez (he/him): Yeah. In terms of music, I would, I would say the latest one, I listen a lot of Eminem.

JP Flores (he/him): I love that.

Robert Fernandez (he/him): (inaudible) by Eminem.

JP Flores (he/him): Yeah. Nice. Cool. Do you like the old school hip hop rap or the 90s?

Robert Fernandez (he/him): Oh Yeah.

JP Flores (he/him): Yeah. That’s awesome. Cool. All right. Well, that’s all the questions I had for you. Thank you so much for, you know, taking the time to do this. I didn’t mean it to be like taking up your entire evening. I just wanted it to be like a quick one hour conversation. So hopefully that was worth your time, and I’ll get this published in a couple of weeks and hopefully a lot of people listen to it and will get to know more about your organization.

Yeah, we get around like 10,000 listeners an episode. So hopefully this will, this can give, you know, your organization a little more publicity, too. Yeah, so I first heard about it through Twitter because at the time I think in 2021, I was applying to grad school and around that time, I kept seeing Científico Latino pop up on my feed. So that’s how I first learned about it, but now that I’m in graduate school, you know as a third year. I’m like also doing a lot of DEI initiatives on a lot of different committees. I have the podcast. I’m actually currently an intern at the NIH for the office of science policy. Yeah, with the, with the idea that like I can, I can help diversify STEM through science policy is like my, my plan.

Robert Fernandez (he/him): That’s great.

JP Flores (he/him): So yeah, so if you have any, if you need any help with anything, let me know because I’m also getting my PhD in bioinformatics and computational biology. So like very data science minded. Yeah.

Robert Fernandez (he/him): Yeah, definitely we’ll be in touch.

JP Flores (he/him): Yeah. Yeah, please. I’d love to also meet you at some point. So if I’m ever going up to Columbia, I’ll be sure to hit you up.

Robert Fernandez (he/him): Yeah, I’ll probably be in Queens starting the summer, but yes.

JP Flores (he/him): Cool. Sounds good. Well, thanks. So. Thank you so much for your time, and it was really nice meeting you and if you have any questions, feel free to follow up.

Robert Fernandez (he/him): Sure thing, take it easy.

JP Flores (he/him):Thank you so much. Bye.