Physicist is building a community for Black and Latinx scientists

Dr. Jessica Esquivel is an AfroLatinx woman physicist who is working on the Muon g-2 experiment at Fermi National Laboratory. PHOTO PROVIDED BY DR. JESSICA ESQUIVEL.
Dr. Jessica Esquivel is an AfroLatinx woman physicist who is working on the Muon g-2 experiment at Fermi National Laboratory. PHOTO PROVIDED BY DR. JESSICA ESQUIVEL.

Physicist is building a community for Black and Latinx scientists

By Tia Carol Jones

Dr. Jessica Esquivel became interested in Science Technology Engineering Arts and Mathematics (STEAM) from watching science fiction movies growing up. When she saw “Contact,” with Jodie Foster playing an astrophysicist, she was hooked and enthralled by the story of a woman scientist who was leading a group.

“At a very young age, I started saying I wanted to be an astrophysicist when I grew up,” she said.
Esquivel credits representation and speculative media for her interest in the unknown and what’s out there. Esquivel’s mother and aunts helped her cultivate her interest in physics.  As a AfroLatinx physicist, growing up in Texas, NASA was in her backyard, and she was able to see what Astrophysicists did. Her mother didn’t gender career choices. At a young age, her mother told Esquivel that she could do whatever a man could do.

Esquivel is working on the Muon g-2 experiment at Fermi National Laboratory, in Batavia, Ill. The particle physics experiment shoots muon particles into a 50-foot diameter magnet to peer into the quantum realm to see if there is new physics that hasn’t been seen before. It requires precise tools and measurements.

Esquivel received her Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and Applied Physics from St. Mary’s University and her Ph.D. in Physics from Syracuse University. She found out that particle physics was her love after doing internships during undergraduate.

With the work Esquivel has been doing, she sees a lot of her Electrical Engineering skillset come into play. It takes Electrical Engineers, Mechanical Engineers, Technicians, Cryo and Electronics, Nuclear and Atomic Physicists.

“Being able to not only understand my jargon as a physicist, but electrical engineers jargon so we can  communicate and have the same conversation, has been really beneficial. Also, understanding the electronics of the data systems that we have to build to collect the data from this experiment, has also been really useful,” she said.

Esquivel is one of the founding members of Black in Physics, which was created during the height of civil the unrest in 2020. At the time, a lot of science organizations and institutions were recognizing mental health and mental wellness in regards to COVID-19, but were silent when it came to the mental health and wellness of the Black practitioners and stakeholders in regards to the murders of unarmed Black people.

“Black in Physics was born out of that, as a way to say we are here, we are part of the Physics community, and we are working on healing. It was brought together to build community, because a lot of us are one of few, or the only, at our respective institutions, and that type of isolation, especially during that time of grief and trauma was compounded,” she said.

Black in Physics was also born out of an effort to highlight the great work Black people in the Physics community were doing. One of the big goals of Black in Physics is to help create the next generation of scientists. Esquivel acknowledged that in 2020, Black in Optics and Black in Astro, also launched. She believes there should be more than one organization for Black people in the Physics community.

A huge part of Esquivel’s career goals includes helping and mentoring Black and Latinx scientists. She wants to build a community and share what she is learning with people who look like her. She talks to high school classes that come to Fermilab, as well as serves as an ambassador for If/Then, an organization with the mission to further advance women in STEM.

“We see, especially for folks that are marginalized in STEAM, that they, whether it be for survival, or they want to leave the spaces better than when they came in, we tend to reach for that activist or changemaker hat and try and increase representation, increase retention and recruitment of people who look like us,” she said.

Esquivel has received support from people in her department and those immediate supervisors. She has been able to speak up and use her voice, it resulted in her having a job description that included equity and justice work, as well as community engagement. She is also a part of Change Now, a group at Fermilab of Black scientists that is seeking changes and a call to action to show that Black Lives Matter.

Esquivel said the lab has been responsive, has actually listened and wants to improve the culture of the lab. There has also been an understanding for the need to pivot from recruitment to retention, which requires an introspective look at the culture of an institution and having hard conversations about what is being done to push people out.

Esquivel acknowledges that there is still work that needs to be done, but she is hopeful that eyes and ear are open.

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