Most award opportunities originate from the commitment of former Hispanic leaders whose legacy is demonstrated by financially supporting the intellectual advancement of Spanish speaking scholars in science.
Miguel Velez Scholarship Awardees 2022
The Miguel Velez Scholarship $7,000 USD award for financial support to graduate students from Latin America, who have demonstrated outstanding academic performance to continue their graduate studies.
This 2022 academic year, three MGREP members: Ramses Seferino Trigo Torres, Angel Balam Benítez Mata, and Adriana Meza Soria were successfully awarded.
Ramses Seferino Trigo Torres Biomedical Engineering Miguel Velez awardee 2022 |
Angel Balam Benítez Mata Biomedical Engineering Miguel Velez awardee 2022 |
Adriana Meza Soria Software Engineering Miguel Velez awardee 2022, 2019 and 2017 |
ICS Latino Excellence and Achievement Awardee 2021
The Latino Excellence and Achievement award was the inspiration of Ph.D. in Education graduate student, Veronica Ahumada, who believed in the recognition and celebration of UCI’s Latinx thriving community.
Ahumada’s areas of research interest are tele-social robots, health equity, robot-mediated health and human development, inclusion, and emerging technologies that facilitate improved health outcomes. Ahumada’s research encompasses strong interdisciplinary efforts between medicine, health informatics, computer science, robotics, learning sciences, and the technology industry.
On March 30th, 2021, Adriana Meza Soria was given recognition as the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences (ICS) awardee, for her research in studying software design meetings. Adriana dedicated the award in memory of her late father.
“International Latin students confront many barriers in this country, disconnection from our roots, being far from our family, economic dependency on limited fellowships and scholarships, and more. The Latino Excellence and Achievement award acknowledges our effort to overcome these barriers. It filled my heart to be selected as the ICS awardee in 2021”, Adriana said.
Summer Interns 2021
Summer is a timely opportunity for MGREP scholars to secure internships in either industry or research institutions around the world to apply their knowledge and skills acquired during their graduate preparation. Paid internships are very competitive.
In spite of the pandemic period, in 2021, three members of our community earned the opportunity to work with industry.
Ramses Seferino Trigo Torres Biomedical Engineering Intern at Sensorris, Inc. |
Arturo Garza Software Engineering Intern at Google |
Adriana Meza Soria Software Engineering Intern at IBM |
Ramses Seferino Trigo Torres, worked designing novel devices for electrophysiology and non-invasive fetal ECG at Sensoris, Inc.
Arturo Garza worked extensive hours to propose better ways to develop efficient and reliable solutions for Google systems’ infrastructure.
Adriana Meza developed explorative prototypes that seek to apply the power of AI and ML to real-world solutions at IBM.
Graduate Awardees 2019
The Rosalva Gallardo Valencia Graduate Award in ICS was established by the alumna Rosalva Gallardo Valencia (Ph.D. 2012) to honor her Hispanic heritage and support Hispanic graduate students in need.
In 2019, Adriana Meza Soria, an MGREP member, was selected as the first recipient of the Rosalva Gallardo Award. In addition to the economic support that she received to fund her studies at UCI, Adriana was introduced to the award’s founder, ICS alumna Rosalva Gallardo Valencia, who has become her career mentor.
Summer Interns 2019
Arturo Garza spent the summer at CERN developing a C++ open-source API for integrating SIMD components into a scalar workflow.
After only 10 months of graduate studies at UCI, Daniela Ruiz was sponsored by MGREP with the opportunity to spend a summer doing research at Tianjin University, in China. In addition to gaining academic experience in a very competitive intellectual atmosphere within interdisciplinary and intercultural teamwork while in China, this experience endured Daniela’s resilient character to overcome all possible obstacles in her future career and personal life.
Arturo Garza Reserach Intern at CERN, USA |
Daniela Ruiz Reserach Intern at Tianjin University, China |
MGREP Social Responsibility Formation
MGREP stimulates Mexico’s intellect to be best prepared to solve today’s societal challenges and foresee tomorrow’s needs.
With pride, hard work, and drive for professional success, MGREP fellows, have been recognized with the announced awards by institutions and private industries.
Beginning in 2018 MGREP becomes the conduit to train Mexico’s graduate candidates at the Ridge 2 Reef (R2R).
Participants in the MGREP’s summer institute are, from left, Paloma Fierro, Dianalaura Cueto, Arturo Meza, Ana Van Boeyen, Isaac Triujeque, Daniela Ruiz, Margarita Rivera, Steven Allison, Efi Foufoula-Georgiou, Brandon Esquivias and Luisa Kregel, Program Co-Founder
In 2018, six graduate students from Mexico were granted summer fellowships from the Ridge 2 Reef (R2R).
Mindful of students’ financial needs, and based on scholars’ academic performance and needs, UCI is the conduit for fellowship opportunities. The goal is to secure students’ academic and financial security, competence, and professional success.
MGREP Summer Internship Recipients 2018
In 2018, Dianalaura Cueto Duenas and Ramses Seferino Trigo were MGREP’s first summer internship recipients.
Dianalaura Cueto MGREP Summer Intern |
Ramses Seferino Trigo MGREP Summer Intern |