My name is Oscar Vazquez.
I am from Mexico.
I was born in Mexico City.
When I was a kid, my family moved to Chiapas,
which is what I call home.
I think for me, Chiapas is my home state,
and for those of you who don't know,
Chiapas is all the way inside of Mexico,
in the border with Central America.
That's why I always feel like a connection
with the Mayan civilization, with the Maya history.
I don't have any proof, but I always like to
dream that I am a descendant of the Mayans,
and because of their connection
with the astronomy and the sciences,
that was one of the first things why
I was thinking that I should be also
a good mathematician like Mayans.
I was fortunate to have
a family that always care about education.
My mom, she didn't make it to college.
My dad went to the University,
he couldn't finish, but then he moved to accounting.
But I had also an uncle who actually did
physics and an uncle who did architecture,
so I believe that I always have
a small inputs from different people in my environment,
which show me a little bit of
the way to always do good in school.
Also, my granddad,
he had a nice library where I was always reading stuff.
I remember, the very few things that I was
excited about this atomic energy,
and just the name at that time sounded cool to me.
I was like, this thing of
smashing atoms sounds very cool.
Then I was just trying to talk him
back why was that the case,
and I started reading about these
Einstein's theory of relativity.
I really didn't understand,
but I feel attracted to that.
That's why I now understand how important is to give our
Latino students guidance, role models,
for me becoming a mentor with
them just to give them an image and
a role model that if I did it
when I was born in Mexico and made it
all the way to get a research career,
I think you can definitely do it.
You have all the skills that you
need to develop your career, so in that sense,
I understand how important is to have
role models because I had input from professors,
and my parents, and family.
Having said that, I also faced
some challenges to develop my academic career.
I guess, one of the first things that I faced
was that definitely starting in
a school in Chiapas is not the optimal way if
you want to make an international career in research.
Already in Mexico, I tried to go to college,
to the National university
where a lot of people dreams to study physics,
and I didn't pass exam.
I start to realize, I'm not still
at the level of being
able to be in the best university in Mexico.
I guess, what happened there is that I
learned that sometimes you
can get to your goals little step by little step.
Sometimes you want to really achieve
big dreams and go to the big goals.
If you can do that,
that's amazing and that's very important.
But I guess I learned from myself that,
sometimes I prefer to go step-by-step.
I went to UNAM university in
Mexico that was also excellent.
It turned to be an excellent experience for me,
a lot of friends, very good academic level.
I just realized a lot of things that I
was dreaming about like learning physics and math,
but I really felt satisfied with what I was achieving.
Then also, for example, when I finished my undergrad,
I already had a dream to go to a PhD school.
I did some applications,
I couldn't get to go
to the university in the United States.
Again, I took a small step,
which was I did a masters,
and I went to Europe because over there it was
easier for me to have financial support.
I ended up being in Sweden,
and that's where I started doing Nanotechnology.
Then from the masters,
then I went to a PhD in Europe.
Then from the PhD in Europe,
I finally landed to do a postdoc at
Berkeley in a very big and good university.
Many colleagues really saying,
"I did my undergrad in this school and
then I went to a PhD in Berkeley,
in Harvard, in Stanford."
That was never a possibility for me,
but I still feel proud because I
think I'd really achieved big things.
I eventually get to Berkeley.
I would say just a step-by-step.
Sometimes, it's not so wise to make
a big jump because you might not get it
there and you can fall very hard.
My approach has been,
take safer steps little by little.
That's one definitely one of
the challenges that I had that I
started from a difficult place to start with,
but I eventually made it.
Having said that, I also
want to say what was another challenge for
me that I want to especially
share with the Latinx community,
which is that you have to be ready to fail,
you have to be ready to know that
sometimes you won't get
the opportunity that you were dreaming off.
That you perhaps won't be able to get into that school,
that perhaps you won't be able to get into
that program or work with a certain professor.
In my case, for example,
I told you at the beginning,
I wanted to go to the best university in Mexico,
it didn't work for me.
I felt definitely sad about it, I felt disappointed.
However, the second school that I went to,
it was an amazing experience
I met some of the best friends of my life.
I did a lot of soccer,
I realized that I was better at soccer than I thought.
Right now, I don't really care if I didn't get to
the first university that I wanted
because the second experience was amazing.
Then also I told you I wanted to go for a master's as
a middle step before going to a PhD.
I actually wanted to go
to Canada to do electrical engineering,
but I wasn't accepted for that.
My second choice was going to Sweden,
and even though at that time I wasn't really excited,
when I went to Sweden, it was,
again, a life-changing experience.
In Sweden, they offer me a scholarship,
and also in Sweden, that's when
I hear about Nanotechnology.
Ministries ask me,
why did you wanted to do Nanotechnology?
Actually, it wasn't my dream,
I didn't know about Nanotechnology back in 2000.
But this opportunity in Sweden,
they were started with Nanotechnology
and they invited me to that program,
and thus, I started to know what was Nanotechnology.
I love it and I took the opportunity.
Again, my life has been always
about the second opportunities, the second chances.
The second chances have been greater for me
than my first goals, I would say.
The same with my postdoc.
A lot of people will know,
I went to Berkeley trying to do chemistry of
some type of Nanostructures
and my background was in physics,
so when I went to Berkeley
and I wanted to do research in chemistry,
I wasn't up to the game
because it wasn't really my background.
It was a little bit of my dream to do
chemistry in some Nanostructures.
That's what I always wanted to do,
so I thought finally I'm going to do it in Berkeley.
It didn't really work.
But you know what? I think I had the courage to
accept and also because of
my friends and my mentors who told me,
"The fact that you were not successful in this program,
it doesn't mean that you're not capable.
It just showed that perhaps that's not your route."
In Berkeley, I had a chance to move gears,
to go to the physics department what I had experienced.
That's what I got the opportunity to work with graphene,
which at that time was a material
that was really taking off,
and I did learn a lot about graphing,
and that put me in
a strong position to get a faculty position.
For me this second,
opportunities have been amazing,
I'm not saying that you shouldn't go for your first goal,
I mean, you need these dreams,
you need your goals to move forward,
you need that energy,
that motivation to move you
forward and to go for your goals.
If you get into the school that you want,
if you get into the problem that
you want, that's perfect.
When you get that It's an amazing feeling.
But if that door doesn't open to you,
look on your side and believe me,
life is always going to put you
amazing opportunities in your life.
That has been the case for me,
and I guess the way I think now about
is life is always full of
surprises and so I think sometimes the best things
that happen in life
are those things that you didn't plan.
If you go on holidays and
you make your plan, your itinerary,
if everything goes the way you want,
it may end up in a little bit boring in that sense.
But I think when you have a surprise,
when you have something that you didn't expect,
when you went to a place that you didn't know
about it and you find that is beautiful you realize,
that was the best experience of my holidays.
I want to use certain message,
especially for our Latino community,
is going to be tough.
Perhaps you won't always get
into the school that you want.
But that shouldn't stop you from moving
forward from taking the alternative paths because,
if you work hard, if you always bring a good attitude,
life will compensate for those efforts that you take.
I'm sure you're going to move
your life forward and you're going to,
of course, make your family
proud of what you have achieved.
That's definitely about what I want to say about
the challenges and what has inspired me.
Now, a little bit about
what advice can I give to myself?
I would say, always try to give the best attitudes,
always things might be not the way that you want,
but always try to put a positive attitude.
Now, I also want to talk to you a little bit about
my research and my activities here at UCSD.
The nice thing about academy for
me is that I make the things that I love.
One of them is teaching,
interacting with the students, always working with
the students make you feel like
a little bit younger, I guess so.
I would like to feel that energy from the students.
I can do research, I can bring
my ideas and put them in action.
Of course, that's also pretty nice and good.
What I can tell you a little bit is I
have a couple of projects.
One of them is related to try to see
what's going on in the brain without opening your skull.
I think that's a very nice goal that I have.
As you may know, if you have
any brain disease, for example,
that's typically what people have to do
is you have to open the skull and do surgery,
put implants, stuff like that you definitely don't
want to do because every brain surgery is a risk.
I guess most of you know that there is
a beautiful tool to know what's going
on inside your body, which is ultrasound.
Well, with an ultrasound you can see,
especially for mothers who are
pregnant you can see how your baby
doing. It's a beautiful tool.
However, if you want to use ultrasound
to see what's going on inside your brain,
you hit a barrier and that barrier is the skull.
Skull makes a very good work protecting your brain.
You can do magnetic resonance imaging
to see what's inside the brain.
But that's a very expensive tool
and you can do the surgery.
What we're trying is we're trying do ultrasound,
to do brain stimulation,
to do perhaps even interfaces in
the brain but in a way called non-invasive.
By non-invasive, what we mean is we don't
want to open a hole in your skull.
To do that, we need to
send acoustic waves into the skull,
and to do that, we need to create acoustic metamaterials.
These are called negative material that have
opposite properties than what you
would expect from natural properties.
For example, these metamaterials,
they have negative mass,
which sounds cool, but also with negative elasticity.
It means that these materials have different inertia.
The goal for this materials it's
basically to be able to see what's going
on inside your brain and perhaps
do brain intervention without opening your skull.
The other thing that I also
love to do here at San Diego and I thank
UCSD and all the people here is
for giving me the opportunity to
give back to my community.
The way I do this is through service.
You see on my screen that I have
this symbol from the mines and the Aztecs.
So far the way I connect with
my community in California was through Aztec dance.
When I was a kid in my high school,
I did Aztec dance thinking that it was a show.
When I came to California,
I learned all the meaning that
Aztec dance has for the people here,
and that's how I got in touch with the community.
The community here in California has given me
so much is I told them I'm from Mexico.
Coming to California, I felt like I was a foreigner.
But the Aztec, the people,
especially the indigenous community from
Mexico and Central America living in California,
just welcomed me as a brother here.
What I tried to do now is to give back.
Thanks to the support of the University of California,
I've had the opportunity to start programs
where we have worked with
kids from indigenous communities from Mexico
whose parents have brought them to
California and show them that,
if you're good in math,
if you're good in school,
you can also go to a four-year university college.
For me, it was always sad to see many of
these kids asking them what you want to do in life?
Just not having a good answer.
What we did is we brought them to Berkeley.
We showed them the museum,
we showed them the labs and
at least right now, these kids,
they have the opportunity to see what they can do beyond
just going to high school and then finding a job.
Another thing that we also done here was
to support what UC San Diego's we're trying to
help kids whose parents have been deported.
You can imagine that there are a lot of families here who
have not the best legal situation.
What I found is that there are a lot of people,
a lot of students, who live in Tijuana,
but they are actually US citizens,
and they cross the border every day to come to school
in San Diego because
they have the dream to go to college in California.
They have all the right,
they are American citizens,
but sometimes because of the situation of the parents,
they are forced to go back to
Mexico or Central America with their parents.
At least many of them, for example,
they stay in Tijuana because that what
allows them to cross the border every day.
This is a tough project because now
the situation at the border has gotten very complicated.
But that's some of the work that we have
done here in collaboration also first of all,
in the past with Border Angels.
Right now, we are starting also a new project called
the Research Paths for Latinx Students.
We're aware that a lot of Latinx students,
a lot of Hispanic students,
they don't have that much research experience
when they finish
high school or when they finish community college.
When they come to UCSD,
they are not fully aware about
all the research opportunities that they may
have here at UCSD.
What we are trying to start,
is now a problem where we show
them how can you get into research lab,
some of research opportunities,
academic achievement programs,
and also mentor them and tell them,
these are the strategies that you may
use to get into research programs.
A final word that I want to say also for the parents
or the students is that
the students they need the support of the parents.
Family is very important,
community is very important.
We may have a student here at UCSD,
but if this student doesn't
feel the support from his family
or her family or from his community or her community,
he may feel that he's not fully
enjoying things because his family or
his community is behind.
So what we need to do is to offer
support to our students here at UCSD.
Share with them the pride of being at UCSD,
share with them the ambition of finishing
college and eventually do research.
The role of the parents and
the community is very important for
students to make them feel that they are doing
something good for the community.
Thus, I think we need to have
our students feel like they are complete.
I think for the Hispanic students,
you don't feel complete on your own.
You need to know that you are doing something with
your community and your family.
That's the message that I want to share with you,
and I thank again to the UC system,
to UC San Diego and to
all the community here at UC San Diego.
Thank you very much.