The honor also comes with $1 million in federal money, $200,000 a year over five years. That’s enough funding. He said it will allow him to hire two graduate students for a new total of six and possibly a post-doctoral student.
UMass scientist Alejandro L. Briseno shakes the hand of President Barack Obama at the 2011 Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers recipients in the East Room of the White House, July 31.
. AMHERST – Alejandro L. Briseno’s work as a polymer scientist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst will lead one day to more efficient solar panels and LCD display screens.
Briseno, 40, hopes it will also lead to a new crop of young Latino scientists, especially ones growing up now in tough neighborhoods like his own Baldwin Park section of Los Angeles.
“It’s difficult for someone to make it from Baldwin Park,” Briseno said last week after returning from the White House where he was honored by President Barack Obama as an outstanding early-career scientist. “It’s a place that in the 70s and 80s had a lot of gangs. I represent Baldwin Park through my success. I don’t forget where I came from.”
He was a freshman in college when his father was murdered, shot six times in the head. Police never identified the killer.
“I faced some challenges after that for the next six years of my life. I made a decision to pursue science,” he said.
He worked four jobs to get his way through Cal State Los Angeles. He flipped burgers, worked in telecommunications, gardened. He worked in the university’s greenhouses. He’s the only one in his family of five children to go to college.
He earned an undergraduate degree, before earning a master’s degree in chemistry at UCLA in 2006 and a Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of Washington in 2008.
Briseno joined the faculty at UMass in 2009, drawn he said by the strength of the polymer science department.
Tuesday, he was at the White House being honored to receive the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the highest honor bestowed by the federal government on science and engineering professionals in the early stages of their independent research careers. That award followed his prestigious Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award.
He wasn’t the only scientist with UMass ties honored with a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers Tuesday.
Maria Urso of the U.S. Army Research Institute for Environmental Medicine earned her doctorate in kinesiology at UMass Amherst in 2006, according to the University.
Briseno’s award came with a handshake from the president.
“He told me my research is very important to the future of the country,” Briseno said.
It also comes with $1 million in federal money, $200,000 a year over five years. That’s enough funding. He said it will allow him to hire two graduate students for a new total of six and possibly a post-doctoral student.
“This money came at a crucial time because we are discovering a lot of new phenomena in our group,” he said. “This is a big deal. We have a very strong program here.”
Applications for his technology might include lightweight, durable solar panels that could be sewn into a soldier’s equipment or clothing and used to power the soldier’s electronic devices.
“Or sew it into a woman’s handbag so she can charge up her phone,” he said. “Imagine having something like that on the dashboard of your car, or on the roof of your car. But in order to do this we need to understand these materials on a fundamental level.”