He is an astronomer & education specialist at UC Berkeley’s Space Science Laboratory. He teaches astronomy & physics, and develops space science educational resources for students, teachers, and the public.
He was born and raised in beautiful Traverse City, Michigan. Culturally it’s super conservative and super homogenous. His family was a bit unusual, with his liberal, atheist, Mexican dad and apolitical, Jehovah’s witness, white mom. He spent most of his young life as the odd person out (the only Latino or Jehovah’s witness in the room), especially when in academic spaces.
When he was very young, Star Wars came out in theaters and inspired an interest in space (as well as sparked a love of the movies). As a teenager, he got hooked on reruns of Star Trek, which further inspired him to consider a career in science, so he could be like Mr. Spock. Not only was Spock an inspiration because of his scientific heroics, but because he was also the odd person out.
Bryan was the first person in his family to go to college, which could be a lonely feeling sometimes. He never felt personally discriminated against. After all, he's a white Latino with all kinds of social privilege. He's only recently learned to recognize it. He wasn’t oblivious to discrimination, however. His dad told him many stories about the racism he encountered growing up, including rampant police harassment. Kids at school loved to tell racist jokes about the migrant Mexican families who came to their town every summer to work the orchards. He's proud to say that, even as a little kid, he would call out their B.S. and point out to them that he himself, was a Mexican.
When Bryan was an undergraduate, him and a close friend went to an astronomy professor’s office looking for help on a homework problem. The professor“explained” that it was only natural that his friend couldn’t solve the problem, because “women can’t do math.” That experience shook her. It shook Bryan too. He couldn’t believe that not only did the professor believe that, but that he was perfectly confident in telling her that, right in front of him. Many female colleagues have confided similar experiences to Bryan over the years.
Bryan was actually torn between astrophysics and music and ended up getting degrees in both. He's a saxophonist. He studied, performed, and taught music in college and grad school. For the past 18 years he's played with the Jazz School’s Adult Big Band in Berkeley. During the pandemic he's experimented with making multitrack recordings.
By the end of Bryan's undergraduate days, he was convinced that he didn’t have enough talent to have a brilliant career in music (perhaps that was a kind of imposter syndrome; his peers were so good, he didn’t think he could compete). So, he “fell back” on astrophysics and decided to go to grad school.
Bryan experienced lots of imposter syndrome in grad school. The department chair straight up told him that he had gotten pressure to admit him because he was a minority and they needed to improve their diversity numbers. So, he was primed to feel like he didn’t belong. He had bombed the physics GRE, did terribly in several classes (E&M, Quantum, Fluid Dynamics), and failed his first attempt at the Prelim exam. But, he was extremely stubborn, and eventually found that teaching was a strength of his and a pathway to help him learn. He came back and aced those Prelims the second time around.
Maybe he got a little cocky about those newfound teaching skills. He led a movement of students in the astronomy department to pressure the faculty to improve the quality of their teaching. That didn’t earn Bryan much favor amongst the faculty. But they did put him in charge of teaching new grad students some best practices in pedagogy.
Even though he had some wonderful friends and mentors, he still often felt lonely; like he couldn’t just be himself. There were a lot of cultural attitudes he was encountering in astronomy that were pretty exclusionary. The attitude toward work-life balance was toxic. He recalled a professor bragging about how he never got to see his family because he worked so much. As if that was a good thing. Family is everything to Bryan, they always come first.
There were also plenty of insufferable know-it-alls. Everything (and he means everything) was a contest of who was the smartest and most accomplished. It’s exhausting.
Bryan loved astrophysics research, but found the professional environment to be too hostile toward those not conforming to a particular mold. He was very lucky to find the Center for Science Education at the Space Sciences Lab: a wonderful, diverse, nurturing group of people dedicated to improving STEM education and outreach.
Studying and working in the field of space science, he was quite aware of how white and male it was. But, he doesn't think it really hit him until he learned that in the year he earned his PhD, that he was the only Latino in the US to do so. His work since has been dedicated to advocating for diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility and social justice to evolve the culture of space science to welcome and nurture everyone’s curiosity and wonder.
Bryan's current projects are focused on broadening participation of under-represented learners in NASA space science enterprises. One theme of his work is that representation matters and providing learners with role models in the sciences can inspire them to activate their STEM identities. He's been exploring a passion for filmmaking by incorporating it into his work. He recently made a documentary short film about issues of diversity in the space sciences featuring interviews with colleagues who are under-represented in science: Full Spectrum.
Another theme of his work is sparking interest in space science by making it personally relevant through cultural connections. He's worked with Indigenous colleagues on communicating the astronomical traditions of Maya, Mexica, and Navajo people to their youth and the general public.
In a current project, he's combined both themes of cultural connections and role models in researching the diversity of STEM characters in popular movies.
Bryan would like to broaden his collaborations and reach. So drop him a line if you’ve got some interest, ideas, or if you just want to chat.
If you enjoyed Bryan's story and want to connect with him, you can find him on Twitter: @bryanjmendez
Here are some threads where you can learn more about his interests and career:
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