Growing up in San Bernardino, California, in a working-class immigrant family, Andrew Ramirez didn’t know what engineers were until a science teacher in his high school encouraged him to look into the profession. Now on his way to earning a Ph.D. in bioengineering at UCLA, Ramirez said he hopes his experience can help empower others from historically underrepresented communities to pursue their dreams without fear.
The fourth-year doctoral student at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering recalled how hard his parents, who emigrated from Mexico, worked manual labor jobs to support him and his three siblings. From an early age, Ramirez was passionate about math and science even though his family members did not share an affinity for the subjects.
“That motivated me even more to prove that someone in our family could succeed in the STEM field,” Ramirez said of his decision to…
