Dominguez working to give Hispanic youth a brighter future

Aaron Dominguez works with the most fundamental laws of nature while also helping give Latino youth the fundamentals needed to succeed in higher education and in life.

Dominguez, assistant professor of physics at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, has been awarded a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) grant of $550,000 for five years from the National Science Foundation to support his work in subatomic physics and to provide mentoring for Hispanic youth in Lincoln.

CAREER grants are awarded to early-career faculty who effectively integrate research and education within the context of the mission of their organization.

Dominguez has seen Latinos struggle from his youth to his professional life. In his Albuquerque, N.M., high school, about half of the Hispanic students dropped out before finishing. And despite professional contacts made through conferences and collaborations, he said he has never met another Hispanic researcher in his sub-discipline of particle physics.

"It's very frustrating, and it's something I felt I could never do anything about," he said.

Dominguez said he hopes to interest high school students in attending college by introducing them to the UNL campus and having university students talk with them. Dominguez tells youth that academic success doesn't come easy, since bilingual Latinos have to work harder to learn in the English language, with which they have varying degrees of exposure.

For the research section of the CAREER grant, Dominguez collaborates with fellow UNL physicist member Kenneth Bloom, also a CAREER winner. The two work with data created by experiments at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., to measure the results of the collision of highly charged protons and anti-protons.

CONTACT: Aaron Dominguez, Asst. Professor, Physics & Astronomy, (402) 472-6016