Testimonios: Dr. Angel Ramón Pineda Fortín

Testimonios, a new publication from MAA/AMS, brings together first-person narratives from the vibrant, diverse, and complex Latinx and Hispanic mathematical community. Starting with childhood and family, the authors recount their own particular stories, highlighting their upbringing, education, and career paths. Testimonios seeks to inspire the next generation of Latinx and Hispanic mathematicians by featuring the stories of people like them, holding a mirror up to our own community.

The entire collection of 27 testimonios is available for purchase at the AMS Bookstore. MAA members can access a complimentary e-book in their Member Library. AMS members can access a complimentary e-book at the AMS Bookstore. Thanks to the MAA and AMS, we reproduce one chapter per month on Math Values to better understand and celebrate the diversity of our mathematical community with folks who are not MAA members.

The Grandmothers (Abuelitas)

My personal mathematical story begins with two women who changed our family history. They supported their children to be educated in ways that no one in their family had been before. My maternal grandmother (abuelita Amada) was a single mom who raised two daughters (my aunt Gloria and my mother, Guadalupe). Abuelita Amada studied to be a secretary but chose to support my mother through medical school by having a small store out of her house (a pulperia) in Tegucigalpa, the capital city of Honduras. The entire store was just a small room of her house facing the street, but abuelita’s hard work in that store changed the direction for our family. When my parents were still in medical school, with two young children, we lived with abuelita Amada. Later, when my parents were established doctors and my two youngest sisters were born, abuelita Amada came to live with us. Abuelita Amada dedicated her life to her daughters and her grandchildren.

Abuelita Nina with 10 of her children. My father, Angel Sr., is standing and the farthest to the right.

On my father’s side, abuelita Alejandrina (Nina) had eleven children and lived in San Nicolas, Santa Barbara, a small town in a coffee-growing region of Honduras. My father (Angel Sr.) was the seventh of those children and the first to wear shoes before he was school-aged. He only got to wear shoes that young because he was sickly and abuelita Nina was worried about his health. My paternal grandfather (abuelito Pancho) raised cattle and supported abuelita Nina, but the drive for education came from her. Abuelita Nina’s drive to have her children educated and the sense of family collaboration she instilled in her children created the opportunity for my father to go to medical school.

The Parents: Guadalupe and Angel Sr.

I greatly admire both of my parents. They were the first in their families to go to college, get a post-graduate degree, and study abroad. My mom became a doctor in Honduras and specialized in anesthesiology in Mexico. My dad also became a doctor and surgeon in Honduras and sub-specialized in hand surgery in Mexico. We are largely the product of our environment, and my love of learning came from a home where books were everywhere. My parents both encouraged my intellectual curiosity, but also balanced it with a love of sports and travel. At first, this story sounds idyllic, but it is amazing that it came to be.

My parents married during their second year of medical school and had me in their third. Because Honduras has an open admissions policy to medical school, the classes are very competitive and the completion rate is very low. It took a strong drive for them to both have graduated coming from modest means and while having children (my sister Marcela was born two years after me). By the time my dad went away to school, six of his siblings had already gone to school for trade schools or studied to be teachers. When the first siblings left San Nicolas to study, they left by mule because there was no other way. Even though they didn’t have much money, they rotated giving us a stipend each month. This family collaboration continued with my dad’s younger siblings who also went to college with the support of the older siblings. As a medical student, my dad worked providing healthcare to sex workers. My mom and dad would study with a child in one hand and a book in another. Both through hard work and family support, they were able to succeed. As I reflect on anybody’s success, my parent’s story highlights the importance of having a support structure along with hard work. As with everyone, my personal story began with the generations before me, who shaped me into who I am.

Life Before Coming to the U.S.

I was born in Tegucigalpa, Honduras in 1972. From a very young age, I loved school, and mathematics in particular. As a young boy, I would “work” at my grandmother’s pulperia at the register. Arithmetic was my first mathematical love.

When my parents were medical students, they didn’t have much money, but they always prioritized school. We always went to the best school they could barely afford and sometimes we would be called to the principal’s office because we were late in the payments. My parents always put my sister Marcela and I in bilingual schools so we would learn English, even though they themselves didn’t speak the language.

We moved a lot when we were young, settling in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, when they began their medical careers. My parents and my sister Marcela still live there.

When the time came to apply for college, I didn’t know anybody who had gotten as much financial aid as I needed to attend college in the U.S. Because of that, I started college in Guatemala since that was the best school we could afford. As a long shot, I also applied to colleges in the U.S. that I found had financial aid for foreign students by reading a book at the local library. Lafayette College accepted me and gave me more financial aid than both my parents earned in a year. That library book on financial aid ended up changing the trajectory of my life.

Life as a Student in the U.S.

When I first came to the U.S., I had never been to Lafayette College. An uncle picked me up at JFK airport and put me on a bus to Easton, Pennsylvania. On that bus to Lafayette, I had a financial aid letter, but I wasn’t sure it was real. My high school grades were good, but my SAT scores were average for Lafayette. It was hard for me to believe I received that much financial aid.

At Lafayette, I studied chemical engineering. Chemical engineering is interesting and useful, but I also chose it because if I went back to Honduras it would allow me to get a good job. My favorite college classes were in math. I loved the universality and structure of the ideas. Like so many immigrants, financial security played a big role in my decision of which major to choose.

Rob Root (my undergraduate advisor and I at the 2010 Joint Math Meetings.

My time at Lafayette was a time of professional and personal growth. From a professional side, I learned that in the U.S., I could make a good living as a mathematician. I also found that I wanted community service to be a core part of my life. Here is where one of my strongest mentors and advocates on both of those dimensions comes into my story. Rob Root was my undergraduate mathematics research advisor and has become a lifelong mentor and friend. At every stage of my career, Rob has been a voice of wisdom and support who has helped me get to where I am.

I went on to the University of Arizona to get a PhD in applied mathematics. Arizona has an interdisciplinary program which was a good fit for a chemical engineering student who only had a math minor. Even then, I failed to pass my PhD qualifying exams the first time. If I didn’t pass it the second time, I could not continue in the program. This brings me to what I believe is one of the biggest factors in success: persistence. I worked even harder for the second test and passed the exam. Regardless of the outcome, I just wanted to know I had given it my all.

Harry Barrett (my PhD advisor) and I in his house in Tucson in 1997.

After passing my qualifying exams, I was in a course in medical imaging where I saw the professor describe the human body as a mathematical function and imaging in terms of estimating that function from finite measurements. These thoughts combined my love of math with my desire to use mathematics in way that would help society like my parents did in their work in a public hospital in Honduras. That professor, Harry Barrett, eventually became my PhD advisor. I have heard it said that the most important decision you make in your life is choosing your life partner, but the second most important is choosing your PhD advisor. I agree and I feel fortunate to have picked Harry. Both as a mentor and a friend, he is an extraordinary person who shaped my approach to science through his combination of theory and practical application; combining the aesthetic and functional beauty of mathematics.

Like most people in a PhD program, I struggled at times, but a constant was Harry’s belief that all of his students, with enough time and support, could do great work. This belief in his students is something I internalized and try to impart to my own students today. I particularly have this view for students who underestimate themselves. Unfortunately, underrepresented students are often overrepresented in having this mindset.

Professional Career

After graduating with my PhD I went on to work as a postdoctoral fellow at the Radiology Department at Stanford University. It was a wonderful experience where I learned to apply the theory I knew from my PhD to clinical problems bringing me closer to patient care than I had ever been. In one of the projects, I was part of a team which included radiologists, physicists and engineers developing a method for separating water and fat in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in collaboration with GE Healthcare. This project resulted in four patents and is currently being used in MRI scanners. To me, it is amazing that a theoretical tool (Cramer-Rao Bound) could contribute to clinical care of patients. Being part of that effort was my biggest contribution to medical research to date.

Research students at California State University, Fullerton.

Even though I was coming from a postdoc at Stanford and had several publications, it was difficult for me to get a tenure-track position. The first year I applied to mostly research institutions and I didn’t receive a single interview. The second time, I applied to schools that had a balance of teaching and research that was closer to my own balance. That time I received three interviews and two offers, choosing to join California State University, Fullerton (CSUF). CSUF was a great fit for me. It is a Hispanic Serving Institution with many of the students being the first in their families to attend college. CSUF also has a master’s program in applied mathematics which emphasizes industrial applications. This student demographic and mathematical breadth made it a place were I could pursue both my interests in social justice and medical imaging research.

At CSUF I mentored undergraduates in research, first through NIH funding and later through a grant from the Center for Undergraduate Research in Mathematics (CURM). That experience led me to become a member of the MAA subcommittee on research by undergraduates. I also became involved in mentoring underrepresented students through the Math Alliance. Continuing on the path of mentoring led me to be a joint principal investigator (PI) with Scott Annin of the NSF-funded Graduate Access to Research in Mathematics (GRAM) program which provided support for underrepresented students to attend graduate school. Like so many successes before it, it was not funded on the first attempt. Once again, persistence and collaboration were two major ingredients in making GRAM happen.

At CSUF, I also developed my teaching philosophy. As a new assistant professor without much teaching experience, I sat in the classes of teachers who were known to be effective. I learned that one has to teach in one’s own voice. As a moderately introverted person, my voice was not as entertaining as some effective teachers. However, I found that I taught best in a quiet way, but using the curiosity about the material which also fuels my research.

After getting tenured and promoted to associate professor, I fell in love with a longtime friend, Tanya, whom I first met when we were research students at Lafayette. I had been single for a long time. A friend once said I was looking for a unicorn as a partner, a person who didn’t exist, but I found her. Tanya lived in New Jersey and had two school aged children who became my kids. Once again, I was looking for a job and this time on the other side of the country.

During my job search, I was fortunate to receive an offer from Manhattan College, a small Lasallian college in the Bronx. Manhattan College serves a large number of low-income students and was starting a master’s program in applied mathematics—data analytics. It was a great opportunity for combining social justice and applied mathematics. As the story repeated itself, the importance of fit in getting a job became clearer to me.

At Manhattan College, I keep working on teaching, research and service with the emphasis changing over the years. Currently, I am excited about the new NIH grant, of which I am the PI, to use neural networks to accelerate magnetic resonance imaging by assessing image quality by how well we can detect a signal. Once again, I am able to combine mathematics, mentoring students, and improving medicine into one project. The hours are long, but the work feels like play. I am fortunate.

Supporting Mathematics in Developing Countries

I often think of the people in Honduras and other parts of the world who do not have the same access to education as we do in the U.S. Ideally, we would all have the same opportunities regardless of where we are born.

The first time I applied to the volunteer lecturer program (VLP) of the International Mathematical Union (IMU) I was not selected. Later, during a trip to Southeast Asia with friends, I visited a volunteer lecturer in Cambodia. The next year, I was selected to teach graduate numerical analysis at the Royal University of Phnom Penh (RUPP). As part of an international team, we were helping to rebuild the mathematical community that had been wiped out by the genocide brought about by the Khmer Rouge. That began a path of service associated with the IMU that so far has included co-authoring a report on the state of mathematics in Latin America, serving on the Commission for Developing Countries, and currently being the secretary for Graduate Research Assistantships in Developing Countries (GRAID), a program providing research assistantships to students in the poorest countries

Last day of classes after volunteer teaching in Cambodia.

Being an Immigrant

I have a perspective that is rooted in my upbringing growing up as a person in the racial majority in Honduras. About 90% of Hondurans are mestizos (a mix of Native American and European ancestry). Here in the U.S., when I fill out the census form, I check both the Native American and White boxes because mestizo is not one of the options. Having grown up as a majority shaped the way I look at the world in a way that is different from many of my Latinx students who grew up in the U.S. I have the mentality of the majority even though I am a minority.

I am fortunate to have the language and culture that helps me connect with my Latinx students, but at the same time I realize that I have had many advantages they have not. When something bad happens to me, I rarely wonder if it is because I am brown even if that may be the reason. Growing up, my mother thought I could be president of Honduras, and I did too.

Family

With my three sisters (Marcela, Emma and Denise), *abuelita* and my parents.

I love my job, but what I love the most is my family and friends. Aligning my time with my values is at the heart of my issues with work/life balance. I find that the best way to find balance is with those we love. My wife and I run marathons, and we say that life is a marathon, not a sprint. Even if you love your job, it is easy to burn out. It is important to find joy in all aspects of life and align your time with your priorities. This is a work in progress for me.

With my wife (Tanya) and two kids (Max and Alex) at a sea turtle rescue in Costa Rica.

Advice

As I reflect on what I wish I had known earlier, I think of three things: we all need help, don’t give up, and align your time with your values. Throughout my life there have been people who have helped my family and me. An example that resonates is when my dad’s siblings helped support him in his education. When my younger sisters came to study to the U.S., I tried to do the same for them. If possible, it is important to surround yourself with a supportive community and to support others.

I also think of how many times I failed before I succeeded. There are so many examples of that, but failing to pass my qualifier exam at the PhD level really stands out for me. I could have been happy in a different career path, but I really love what I do. Persisting, not giving up, made the difference. It is important to try to learn from failure and keep trying.

Finally, I am currently working on being deliberate about aligning my life choices with my personal values. Within work, I value teaching, research, and service and try to align my time with how I value these aspects of my career. More broadly, on an almost daily basis, I try to create boundaries for my work so that I have a balance with my personal life. It is important to find a balance that feels right to you.