I’m Jeremy Barber, a first generation Native American student of my family. I’m a current senior in chemical engineering at New Mexico Tech. I reside in north western New Mexico. I’ve been playing sports my whole life, I started with cross-country, then basketball since I was 8 and still playing, football since I was 12, and I recently picked up volleyball. I’m also into weightlifting and I continue to run. I also do photography and I would like to get into sports photography. As for the academic side, I’ve taken part in three research projects in biotech and biomedical engineering. My projects was on protein targeting of influenza done computationally to find the best protein to combat against influenza, the chemical synthesis of a lipid prodrug used in pediatric cancer to treat against neuroblastoma, and my last project was on the encapsulation of liraglutide, a protein that used in diabetic medications, inside hydrogels that were cultivated in a E. coli cell cultures. My overall goal after undergrad is to continue to school and pursue a PhD in biomedical engineering and eventually start a startup. But it wasn’t until a few years ago I got involved in youth sports. Before that the only sports I took part in was the sports I’ve done as a kid and up to now. The main reason I got involved in youth sports is to support and help my niece and nephew learn the game of the sport they’re playing. I took that role on since my niece and nephew lost their father at a young age so I’m technically like the big brother to them and trying to keep them in sports since their father was probably the main reason they both picked up baseball and softball respectively. Both of my niece and nephew are in elementary school and picked up basketball. I’ve been playing basketball my whole life so seeing them pick it up as well is awesome. Whenever I’m home from college I take them to the local gym and I help them with their game. I help them with dribbling, passing, shooting, defense, and we also all do cardio together. Im teaching the game I fell in love with and hope they fall in love with as I did. Since I started getting involved with their sports, I picked up some ref gigs and I would also want to pick up coaching the youth in basketball or football. I also do sports photography for my niece and nephew whenever I get the chance to make their games. At my college I also do intramurals for basketball and I help ref those games as well. Some other youth sports I’ve taken part in that my niece and nephew done were softball, baseball, cross-country, and football. As I mentioned before, they both lost their father at a young age but he was very into baseball and softball. He had his own team and helped coach at the high school as well. When my niece first picked up softball, that’s when I picked it up as well. I learned the game on my own time so I can help teach my niece lot learn the game. Then my nephew picked up baseball and I helped him learn the game as well while I learned it too. So, since I got involved in youth sports, I would like to stay involved and eventually become a coach and guide the youth at becoming better athletes and humans. I would also like to advocate to the kids that education is important and don’t take things for granted.

I’m Jeremy Barber a current senior in chemical engineering at New Mexico Tech. I’m a first generation student of my family and I’m part of the Navajo Nation residing in NM. An experience of mine that shaped me into who I am would be my time in participating in the summer youth programs at my local chapter house. Also a story that shaped me would be a story about my father and how started school only knowing Navajo. His story gave me a glimpse of his life of growing up and school differs from me but those stories helped me stay humble and proud of my heritage. So, the experiences I’ve done with the chapter house during the summer programs were being mentored by an older student, in college and they supervised us and we did activities together, there was about 8 students ranging from middle school to high school taking part in this summer youth program. Some of those activities included weaving, pottery, clay making, and even learning to make frybread which is a bread made by my people. We also did sheep vaccinations, which is something that most people on the reservation do. We went on trips and visited the local Dine College and learned about their programs there and also speakers came in and told us their stories of living on the reservation and school. After I graduated high school, I still took part in the summer youth program with the chapter house taking the role as a college supervisor. I organized the similar events and activities I did when I was part of the program for the younger students so they can experience some of the cool stuff I did. Since I’ve been affiliated with the chapter house, they were able to help support me with college by providing a scholarship and financial assistance grants, which greatly helped me. I also told my experiences of college and provided insight and guidance to the younger students. I mentioned that my father told me his stories growing up on the rural reservation of NM. So my father grew in the 60’s and 70’s. During that time, boarding schools were still were more common on the reservations. He was sent to boarding school starting in August and until May. This gave me great insights of what my father and other Native American kids went through back then. One thing he told me was that when he was first put into boarding school he didn’t know any English and only Navajo. When he told me this, I wanted to learn more about my native language and my roots. During high school I took Navajo language classes and I also talked to my parents in Navajo as I didn’t have any grandparents to talk to like other kids. Since learning Navajo I feel much closer to my roots and heritage. How these shaped my goals, is by making me want to return to the reservation after I get a PhD in biomedical engineering and try to start a startup on the reservation that helps in diabetes. I picked up Navajo as well as it helps me connect with the older generations as well and I want to keep that language alive. The chapter house experience helped with my leadership and communication skills, which are vital in starting a startup. I’ve done work in diabetic medications using bacteria and cell cultures to make the protein, Liraglutide that is used in diabetic medicines. Diabetes is one of the most common diseases on the Navajo nation and my father is also diagnosed with it.

I’m thinking engineering as a path of career because when I was younger my father used to give me some engineering problems to solve or he gave me some examples of what an engineer would do and he also told me stories of the engineers he worked with. My father knew this stuff because he was a machinist and worked very closely to some engineers. This inspired me and made interested in solving problems in an engineer's manner. From there on since I was young I’ve been exploring different engineering career paths. It wasn’t until middle school that I’ve found what path of engineering I was going to take. That path was in Chemical Engineering. I chose this path because I’ve always enjoyed science as my favorite subject and Chemistry was something that always interested me after taking a class in middle school. So from that I managed to learn about chemical engineering and was able to learn in engineering and chemistry which is something I love to do. My current career path is in chemical engineering but I would like to pursue a higher degree and obtain my Ph.D in Pharmaceutical Engineering or Biomedical Engineering. I say this because I’ve gained a huge interest since high school in drug delivery and the creation drugs. Since starting in my undergraduate career I was involved in 2 research projects, one in drug targeting for influenza done during the summer heading into my sophomore year at the University of Pittsburgh and the other being in drug treatment for neuroblastoma done during my sophomore year at New Mexico Tech my home institution. Both of these were done within my first twos of undergrad and I plan on continuing in my current research lab in drug treatment for neuroblastoma at my home institution. I’ve also got another research project I’m joining this summer at Virginia Commonwealth University. With the research I’ve been conducting, I gained a huge interest in drug delivery in cancer research. I say this because cancer is something so many people may have experienced or know someone who has and I want to be a part of making a treatment that can help combat these diseases. This is my main goal in my career and why I chose my path in engineering. My research I’ve done so far both fall under engineering. Both of these research projects and my upcoming research project are all hands on in the engineering field. For my research done at the University of Pittsburgh, it was hands-on research using computational methods as well as engineering methods such as creating the code, interaction network, and etc. I used the program called RStudio to create a Protein-Protein Interaction Network to find which proteins are best to target influenza using data from a research paper that had patient sample data of the genes. For my research done at New Mexico Tech my home institution it was hands-on in a wet lab setting meaning I was actually working with chemicals and drugs during my time in the lab. In lab I’ve done chemistry synthesis to create the drug and from there we used engineering aspects to create lipids using the drug so it can be packaged into liposomes for neuroblastoma treatment. In this lab I’ve use Dynamic Light Scattering (DLS), UV-VIS, Thin Layer a Chromatography (TLC), Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (NMR).

I’m a first generation Native American student from my family coming from the Navajo Nation. Some experiences I’ve had with my culture were the opportunities provided to us and me. I’d say coming from a Native American background has helped me find success in finding and landing a spot in Research Undergraduate Experience (REU). I say this because there’s not much of my people especially where I am from who are continuing their education to the next level working towards a degree. On top of that not much of them are going for a degree in engineering and not much are also pursuing in research while in their undergraduate years. I like being a Native American in research because it brings culture in the labs and also brings diversity in labs, conferences, symposiums, and etc. Other opportunities I’ve had as a Native American were being able to apply to scholarships and also on of the scholarships had a volunteer requirement. For that requirement I went back home and volunteered at my local chapter house and helped with yard work while there. Other stuff I did at the chapter house were helping out with food drives and supply drives. For the supply drives this was done during the time of COVID and I helped the chapter house by handing out supplies such as tissue, wipes, masks, cleaning supplies, hand sanitizer, and water to the community. At the chapter house there the local senior citizen center and I also volunteered there as well for a couple hours every day. At the senior citizens center I helped prepare/cook the food being made that day for lunch. I’ve also helped with setting up the dinning hall and also cleaned up the dishes and dining hall after the senior citizens finished their lunches. While I was there I also helped serve the Senior Citizens by either taking their food to their table or packaging their food in a to go tray and bring it out to them in their vehicles. I also interacted with the seniors and talking with them. This chapter house and senior citizens were both of the Navajo Reservation. Some of my favorite cultural events would be family gatherings in the winter and doing string games and telling stories. I say this because winter is my favorite season and string games are fun as there so many ways of telling a story by using just strings. I also enjoyed some pow wows and listening to the music there. I say this because these help me remind me of my culture and also allow me to enjoy my time and take a step back from everything that’s happening in life.