About

Oaxaca

As Scientists we are presented with some nice perks. One of them is the opportunity to travel to conferences around the world to learn and speak about the research that we do. In 2015 I was lucky enough to be invited to a meeting in Oaxaca Mexico. We were the first such meeting at this venue and it was clear from the time I spent there that young people in that region are rarely exposed to the type of cutting edge research that we do. With this in mind, on our return visit for the same meeting in 2018, with the help of Bruno Cisneros, we organized for 9 of the faculty at the meeting to spend an extra day and travel to a remote middle school and talk about what we do. Some students traveled from distant schools (as much as 4 hours away!) to join and be a part of this. The Mayor came to be a part of it! Most importantly, all of the students were excited and engaged. One student said to me as we left, “I will find a way to join your lab some day.” It was such a rewarding experience for all involved and we hope to keep the mission going in the future. In fact, we would like to expand this outreach to include a 3-7 day workshop that also explores the relationships of cooking and science and how we problem solve with the scientific method. But of course this takes money! If you would like to contribute in anyway, please contact me!