Emanuel Magaña, ’10, M.S. ’12, was raised in an immigrant household in the small town of Woodburn, Oregon. Emanuel is currently a doctoral
student in the educational leadership policy program at Portland State University. He has spent over ten years advocating for first-generation BIPOC students in higher education. His work as the coordinator for Latino/a/x student services was nationally
recognized when his program was an Excelencia in Education Finalist in 2021. Emanuel currently serves as the assistant director of multicultural retention services at PSU, where he helps oversee multiple retention programs and advocates for equity
and inclusion at an institutional level. His experiences of growing up in a low-income, single-parent household drove his passion for education and continues to influence his career working with underrepresented communities. Emanuel currently resides
in the Portland Metro area.
Laura Cristal Magaña, ’11, is a recent graduate of the division of environmental health sciences doctoral program at the University of California,
Berkeley (UCB), and is a Gates Millennium Scholar alumna. Her research objective is to provide supporting molecular and epidemiological data correlating formaldehyde exposures to human diseases. Additionally, she conducts in vivo and ex vitro assays
to assess formaldehyde developmental toxicity. Before her doctoral studies, Magaña was an Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education fellow at the Division of Viral Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. Her
research centered on next-generation sequencing of RNA viruses. Magaña received her Master’s degree in Public Health in maternal and child health from The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. While in D.C., she interned at
the Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion as an HSHPS/National Institutes of Health Fellow. She also interned at the D.C. Public Health Laboratory. In addition, she received a B.S. in Bioresource Research, with options in toxicology and biotechnology
from Oregon State University. She is an active member of the Latina Researchers Network, Society of Toxicology, UCB Graduate Students de la Raza, UCB Latinx Association of Graduate Students in Science and Engineering, Society for the Advancement of
Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science, and Genetic and Environmental Toxicology Association in North California. In the future, Magaña wants to ensure higher participation of women and people of color in STEM careers. She foresees
her research on health disparities in reproductive and developmental toxicology.
Melinda Guzman Martinez, '16, M.S. '20, is a first-generation college student who received her B.S. in Microbiology in 2016 and her M.S. in Botany
& Plant Pathology in 2019 at OSU. She is now a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Georgia in the Department of Plant Pathology, where her research focuses on using thermal imaging for the early detection of Xylella fastidiosa in southern highbush
blueberry. While at Oregon State, Melinda was part of both MANRRS and SACNAS, and worked at the Writing Center for three years before performing research in a horticulture entomology lab studying invasive pests of Oregon crops.
Moderator: Arlyn Y. Moreno Luna, '13, MPP '15, is a doctoral candidate in the critical studies of race, class and gender program at UC
Berkeley’s School of Education. Her research examines access and equity in higher education for historically marginalized students. Read more about Arlyn in this feature story.
