Citizens from all over Yucatan are being invited to participate in a fundraising campaign, “I am Diana Citlali and I want to be a scientist! Support me to finance my stay at Harvard”…
DIANA CITLALI ÁVILA PADILLA is the first woman from Yucatan to participate in a research stay at Harvard University, so she asks for support from the whole society to raise 85 thousand pesos to continue forging her academic preparation.
“I discovered that I wanted to be a scientist thanks to outreach activities aimed at young people, but also to know what life is like for a science researcher. That inspired me and led me to make the decision to study physics and mathematics,” she shared at a press conference.
Clubs of Science Mexico selected Avila Padilla, among more than 2,200 young people, to be part of the research team of Dr. Alan Aspuru Guzik in the Department of Chemistry and Bio-Chemistry at Harvard University.
The Estancias de Investigación program is a project promoted by the Mexican Benjamín Sánchez Lengeling, a doctoral student at Harvard, whom she met in 2015 at the Club called “History among the data”.
The young Yucatecan woman was described as restless, because she has constantly sought out outreach activities where she can participate.
Faced with this important professional challenge, and with limited economic resources, so she called on the Yucatecan citizens to participate in a crowdfunding campaign on the Donadora platform from April 23 to May 23 in order to reach the necessary amount to cover the expenses of the stay.
The name of the campaign is: “I’m Diana Citlali and I want to be a scientist! Support me to finance my stay at Harvard.” The amounts range from 50 pesos to 10 thousand pesos.
Contributors will be rewarded through a recognition event, and for amounts of three thousand pesos or more, they will receive a tax deduction.
Achievements obtained
Among Diana’s achievements are: she was the first young Yucatecan to represent Mexico in the Latin American Olympiad of Astronomy and Astronautics in Cordoba, Argentina, obtaining Honorable Mention, the first to obtain a Gold Medal in the National Physics Olympiad; she also obtained the first and second place in the international contest Let’s Read Science for Everyone.
Text: Jesús Gómez
Photo: Juliana Sepúlveda
