Excellence Through Diversity in Science: Opportunities and Challenges to Fostering Transatlantic Academic Connections for Latino Scholars

Latinx scholars remain underrepresented in many fields of science, both in the United States and Germany. We are pleased to invite you to a Humboldt Dialogue that will explore this issue. The panel discussion will feature experts from both sides of the Atlantic and will be moderated by AFAvH Board members Akasemi Newsome and Hugo Sanabria.

Speakers
Robert W. Fernandez is the co-founder and executive director of Cientifico Latino. He was born in Lima, Peru and grew up in New Jersey, where he attended Union County College. He received his Bachelor of Science Degree in Biotechnology from York College, City University of New York. As a former undocumented immigrant for twenty years, he credits the role of his mentors in helping him navigate his undergraduate and doctoral studies. He received his PhD in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry from Yale, where he mapped neurotransmitter GPCRs in the C. elegans egg-laying circuit. He is the co-founder of Científico Latino, Inc. a science organization that works to improve the pipeline of minoritized students in higher education in the sciences.

Encarnacion Gutierrez Rodriguez is a professor of sociology with a focus on Culture and Migration at the University of Frankfurt am Main. She studied Sociology, Political Sciences and Romance Studies at the University of Frankfurt, Université Lumière II, Lyon, and in Quito, Ecuador. She previously held a chair in sociology at the University of Giessen and was a senior lecturer in transcultural studies in the Spanish, Portuguese, and Latin American Studies Department at the University of Manchester. Her teaching and research engage with questions of global inequalities and their local articulation, particularly in Germany, Spain, and the UK. Her current work is on affective labor/materialities, institutional racism, racial capitalism, and the coloniality of migration.