ZARZA We are Zarza, the prestigious firm behind major projects in information technology.
Listen "8. Alicia Prieto, Life. Chips & Cookies, Impostors & Friends - from Mexico to Youngstown."
Episode Synopsis
As a child in Mexico, Dr. Alicia Prieto would not talk to anyone she did not already know. She also did not think she was good at math. Fearful she would fail math and never talk to anyone, her mother made her go to a math bridge program in the summer before the start of middle school. One day she and her boisterous friends annoyed the teacher so much he told them they could not leave until they solved a challenging math puzzle. To the teacher’s amazement, Dr. Prieto solved it quickly. He was so impressed he told her to join the math club. Despite her misgivings (math club did not seem like the place to make friends), she joined. Later that year she took the qualifying exam for Mexico’s math olympiad. In her own words she only stayed for the exam because there were chips and cookies after! Thankfully she did, as she became the youngest person ever to qualify for the national math olympiad training program in Mexico.
From high school she made the atypical move from home to Mexico’s elite math university CIMAT (Centro de Investigación en Matemáticas) 4 hours from home. After 3 years there she attended an REU at the University of Texas at Dallas, which she enjoyed enough that she just stayed to finish her undergraduate degree there. She shares the challenges of coming to the USA including some infuriating encounters with stupidity and prejudice in her first semester. She went from UT Dallas to UT Arlington where she earned a Ph.D. using agent-based modeling in biomedical applications.
Dr. Prieto shares these details and more (such as her regularly falling asleep on her porch at 11:30pm because her Mom would not let her come back from quinceañera parties before midnight!) in an humorous and playful reflection on her life path.
Among many lessons she highlights her struggles with an impostor syndrome where she felt like she did not belong, and the importance of learning that struggling with math (or anything in life) is normal, and not a sign of deficiency. Dr. Prieto reflects on having a bad relationship in college and a counterbalancing great friendship. She talks about Math Circles and the joy she found helping younger kids encounter the fun the interest of mathematics.
Currently a professor of mathematics at Youngstown State University, Dr. Prieto closes sharing some of the interesting surprises of coming to Youngstown State and embracing a region totally different from where she grew up and went to school.
From high school she made the atypical move from home to Mexico’s elite math university CIMAT (Centro de Investigación en Matemáticas) 4 hours from home. After 3 years there she attended an REU at the University of Texas at Dallas, which she enjoyed enough that she just stayed to finish her undergraduate degree there. She shares the challenges of coming to the USA including some infuriating encounters with stupidity and prejudice in her first semester. She went from UT Dallas to UT Arlington where she earned a Ph.D. using agent-based modeling in biomedical applications.
Dr. Prieto shares these details and more (such as her regularly falling asleep on her porch at 11:30pm because her Mom would not let her come back from quinceañera parties before midnight!) in an humorous and playful reflection on her life path.
Among many lessons she highlights her struggles with an impostor syndrome where she felt like she did not belong, and the importance of learning that struggling with math (or anything in life) is normal, and not a sign of deficiency. Dr. Prieto reflects on having a bad relationship in college and a counterbalancing great friendship. She talks about Math Circles and the joy she found helping younger kids encounter the fun the interest of mathematics.
Currently a professor of mathematics at Youngstown State University, Dr. Prieto closes sharing some of the interesting surprises of coming to Youngstown State and embracing a region totally different from where she grew up and went to school.
In God we trust