Dr. Gerardo Dominguez says that one cannot ignore one’s own personality. His push to excel academically was fueled by a desire for respect, something not necessarily afforded to a poor Hispanic kid growing up in Los Angeles – except from his teachers, who as a whole, granted him respect due to his academic successes. It was a 6th-grade science teacher who nurtured his sense of wonder about the natural world.
According to Dominguez, “He taught me that science is weird and fun, and it was then that I was hooked!” In high school, he encountered only very basic quantum mechanics in an AP chemistry class. He read a textbook for fun and was eager to learn where the formula for the energy levels of hydrogen came from. The footnote about the solution to a wave equation was beyond the scope of the book and the seed for majoring in physics had been planted.
Dominguez’s passion for science is driven by a desire to understand why the universe is the way it is. Looking back, he realizes that during his elementary school years, his fascination with non-fiction books about volcanoes, dinosaurs and icebergs makes sense.
“I am interested in understanding how our solar system and other planetary systems like ours form. … To try and understand this puzzle, I am performing laboratory experiments to better understand atomic and molecular processes that occur on cold dust grain surfaces found in outer space,” Dominguez says.
