Jessica Torres
"I’m intrinsically motivated to help raise a diverse new generation of scientists as I was given an opportunity as a young scientist. My time at SDSU has both validated me as a scientist and has also ensured that I would love to pursue a career in teaching."
Jessica Torres is a doctoral student in the SDSU/UCSD Joint Doctoral Program in Chemistry.
As one of the first in my family to attend college, I had never previously anticipated the possibility of working with NASA and working towards obtaining a Ph.D. The connections I made here at San Diego State University have made all of this possible. My name is Jessica Torres and I am Mexican-American second-year doctoral student in the SDSU/UCSD Joint Doctoral Program in Chemistry and NASA Graduate Fellow. I am currently working in Dr. Christopher Harrison’s bioanalytical chemistry lab where I am in the process of developing a method to detect biosignatures of past life in planetary rocks.
The SDSU Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry is incredibly diverse and the training that I received in this department led me to earn an internship with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in 2019. Under the mentorship of Dr. Harrison, I learned how to develop new methods of separations using an instrument called capillary electrophoresis. As a large contributor to the field of electrophoresis, my mentor has made many connections with separation scientists, including those at NASA. The instrumentation that is used in our lab is also utilized at NASA-JPL to look at biosignatures of life on Europa. My knowledge on this unique instrumentation ultimately led to my six-month internship at JPL and motivated me to write the proposal that earned me the NASA Graduate Fellowship, a program that will fund my research and degree for the next couple of years. Without the mentorship connections that I’ve made through SDSU’s chemistry department, I would not have been able to achieve this prestigious title.
While I finish the remaining years of my degree, I continue to mentor several underrepresented students in our research academic lab. Through our diverse department, I have also teamed up with both graduate students and professors through the College of Sciences to promote mental health awareness for graduate students. This project has become incredibly fulfilling and something that I have developed a new passion for as I continue my career in the sciences. I’m intrinsically motivated to help raise a diverse new generation of scientists as I was given an opportunity as a young scientist. My time at SDSU has both validated me as a scientist and has also ensured that I would love to pursue a career in teaching.
