UTA physicists encourage Hispanic participation in science

by Greg Pederson, College of Science at University of Texas at Arlington
Published on Mirage News on November 14, 2021

This article features Jackie Baeza-Rubio, an alumna of our partner network school, The Young Women’s Leadership Academy of Grand Prairie.

Jackie Baeza-Rubio and Denise Huerta know that the number of Hispanics who study physics and make their careers in the field is small. They are playing an active role in helping that change.

Baeza-Rubio, a junior in physics at The University of Texas at Arlington, and Huerta, who earned her bachelor’s degree in physics at UTA and is now a doctoral student at Notre Dame, are making unique contributions to the development of new techniques to study the neutrino, a subatomic particle with very small mass that travels at near lightspeeds and is very difficult to detect.

The pair was recently named to the board of the National Society of Hispanic Physicists (NSHP), an organization that works to encourage Hispanics to study physics. Huerta will serve as the graduate student representative and Baeza-Rubio will serve as the undergraduate student representative on the NSHP board for 2021-22.