How I Became a Scientist: From Farm Worker to Scientist

Top

00:00:15.17 Hi, my name is Alfredo QuiÃ±ones-Hinojosa.
00:00:18.25 I am an associate professor of neurosurgery, oncology,
00:00:23.12 cellular and molecular medicine in neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University
00:00:27.18 in the Department of Neurosurgery and Oncology.
00:00:31.04 I am delighted to be here with you today
00:00:33.29 and tell you a little bit of my story about
00:00:37.07 how I became a physician scientist, which is what I do today.
00:00:42.24 I show these three different pictures just to illustrate
00:00:46.01 some of my trajectory when I was that small young child growing up in Mexico.
00:00:53.29 As you can actually see, some of my friends have actually teased me
00:00:58.18 over time saying that I really do have a big head,
00:01:01.18 and the reality is that I had a big head all the way back to when I was a little boy.
00:01:08.02 And it's not hydrocephalus, which is accumulation of water on the brain.
00:01:11.28 I just think that I was born with a big head already.
00:01:14.29 And you can actually see all the way from when I was about a year and a half
00:01:19.02 to about four or five years, all the way to just a few months before I left Mexico when
00:01:24.28 I was about 19 years old, and I came to this beautiful country, the United States.
00:01:31.12 I had an incredible trajectory in my life--wonderful role models.
00:01:36.17 And it all began in my house, the role models that I had
00:01:42.00 as I was growing up with my parents, my siblings.
00:01:46.19 In 1971, my little sister died of diarrhea and a gastrointestinal infection.
00:01:54.12 She was only 6 months old and it was a major event in my life,
00:01:59.24 and at a very young age, at only the age of 3,
00:02:03.27 I began to realize that there is a difference between life and death.
00:02:11.25 Such a young age and to think that these sorts of things could actually
00:02:16.22 happen and still happen around the world.
00:02:19.05 It makes me reflect very deeply into my role in this world.
00:02:25.03 By 1979, my father told me that I was the architect of my own destiny.
00:02:33.13 I paid very close attention to all the things that
00:02:38.03 my parents, my grandparents, my siblings told me.
00:02:41.25 And right around that time I began to realize that indeed
00:02:46.00 we do have things in this world that we do for ourselves.
00:02:54.15 To some extent, we are the architects of our own destiny.
00:02:57.17 Santiago Ramon y Cajal once said the chance in good luck does not come to those who want it.
00:03:07.06 It comes to those who look for it.
00:03:10.02 And I kept looking for my own good luck
00:03:12.23 all the way since I was that little boy that you saw with the big head.
00:03:16.24 By 1987, Mexico had gone through a very difficult time.
00:03:21.09 The economy was scrambling and I decided to come to the United States.
00:03:26.17 I immigrated to the United States as an illegal, undocumented alien to work
00:03:32.22 in the San Joaquin Valley as a migrant farm worker.
00:03:36.00 My parents saw their first son leaving the country.
00:03:40.27 I have to put it in perspective because maybe about 15 years prior
00:03:44.22 my mother had seen her own brother leave the country never to return and never to be found.
00:03:53.10 This is the place between Mexico and the United States
00:03:58.23 where I actually hopped the fence.
00:04:02.15 We're looking at it from the American side,
00:04:05.17 and this exact place where back in 1987 I looked and tried to find my own good luck.
00:04:18.06 It reminds me of what Eleanor Roosevelt said once,
00:04:22.29 â€œNo one can make us feel inferior without our permission.â€
00:04:29.08 And those early days were difficult. I can't deny that.
00:04:33.20 Those early days of living in this trailer, which, by the way, I paid $300 for it.
00:04:42.09 And a lot of my friends now tell me that I was taken advantage of.
00:04:48.07 Not only was this a small little house in the middle of nowhere,
00:04:51.14 that I call my first mansion,
00:04:53.27 but the reality is that the first night, when I was living in this mansion,
00:04:57.28 it started to rain. And that night I woke up completely wet from water from everywhere,
00:05:04.27 and I took a picture of this trailer as you can actually see right here,
00:05:09.06 where I was actually able to fix the roof.
00:05:12.20 Very early on, not only was I working in the fields of the San Joaquin Valley,
00:05:18.13 with these very same hands, but I was also already, beginning to fix things that were not working.
00:05:28.01 How little did I know that these very same hands were going to be one day
00:05:33.10 operating on brain tumors and doing science to try to advance the field of brain cancer.
00:05:41.05 I drove some of the most sophisticated machines around that time.
00:05:46.21 This is a particular cotton picker and as you can see I was so full of life, so full of energy.
00:05:53.12 And this is actually a machine that always gets me excited to talk about it
00:05:57.13 because right here in the inside of this machine, as you can see, you can actually sit,
00:06:03.07 not much different than the way I sit today in my operating room chair.
00:06:09.19 Just like an astronaut chair and you're controlling this big machine
00:06:14.01 that is picking cotton with both of your hands and both of your feet.
00:06:18.14 Very, very early on I was having the practice that was going to allow me
00:06:23.03 one day to be able to do brain surgery completely connected to my patients.
00:06:28.12 The only difference nowadays is that the microscope I also control it with my mouth.
00:06:34.02 And I put a mouthpiece that I control and just like back then,
00:06:38.09 I used to drive the machine, now I also control the microscope with my mouth
00:06:42.15 and I can zoom in, zoom out, move the microscope from side to side
00:06:47.15 and be able to navigate the brain.
00:06:49.20 Back then I was navigating the cotton fields;
00:06:52.07 now I've been privileged to be given the opportunity
00:06:55.11 by my patients and their families to be able to navigate the brain.
00:07:00.12 I was an entrepreneur. I took risks. Early on, I began my own trucking company.
00:07:07.00 This is a truck that I bought and I had a dream that
00:07:10.11 one day I was going to have a whole fleet of trucks
00:07:13.15 that was going to allow me to carry cotton from place to place
00:07:17.21 some of the products in the San Joaquin Valley.
00:07:20.26 So early on I was getting already the early teachings of taking risks.
00:07:27.01 Unfortunately, things don't always work the way you want them.
00:07:30.29 And as you can see, this truck, I actually ended up getting completely damaged
00:07:36.26 not only because I myself couldn't actually fix the engine that eventually completely blew up
00:07:42.09 because I didn't know much about mechanics, but I began to learn through reading a book.
00:07:47.06 But the lessons that I learned back then
00:07:49.03 are never to give up and always to try to push the field forward.
00:07:55.00 And I pushed the field forward with this little truck back then
00:07:59.00 by trying to fix it, by trying to fix the engine,
00:08:01.26 by trying to fix the ability of this truck to work in the fields.
00:08:07.20 Eventually, I actually ended up leaving the fields of the San Joaquin Valley.
00:08:12.08 I was told once by one of my co-workers that I was going to spend the rest of my life
00:08:17.29 working in the fields just like many generations of
00:08:20.26 Mexican-Americans who had immigrated to the San Joaquin Valley.
00:08:24.11 I was going on 20 years old, so full of life, so full of hope, so full of energy
00:08:30.04 and to be told this is not something that I was willing to accept.
00:08:34.22 By the time I was in Berkeley I remember I was given a card
00:08:38.01 by one of my classmates with a quote from Cesar Chavez that said
00:08:42.18 "If you're not frightened that you might fail, you'll never do the job.
00:08:47.16 If you are frightened, you will work like crazy."
00:08:52.00 And "like crazy" I have worked my whole life.
00:08:54.29 Not only as a young child working in the gas station of my parents,
00:08:58.21 but now as an adult, now currently as a brain tumor surgeon
00:09:03.12 and as a scientist trying to push the field.
00:09:06.12 On April 14, 1989, just a couple of years before I went to UC Berkeley,
00:09:11.29 I had a major event in my life in which I almost lost my life.
00:09:16.25 And I remember waking up and seeing my father.
00:09:20.27 After everything was under control and I was out of danger, he told me
00:09:24.07 that I was given a precious gift, that life was short, just to be good to others.
00:09:33.04 This is an early picture of me in the middle with my brother, Gabriel
00:09:38.10 and one of my coworkers in which I was working in this railroad company
00:09:44.11 in which I almost left my life.
00:09:47.14 However, I never gave up and I never, never was afraid of continuing to work really hard
00:09:56.25 towards a dreamâ€”a dream that I was going to make it not only better for
00:10:00.27 myself and my family, but potentially for future generations.
00:10:05.20 I always tell my students that there is a fine line between being a mentor and being a tormentor,
00:10:10.19 and I can personally tell you that I probably cross that line.
00:10:14.10 My first mentor was Joe Martinez.
00:10:16.06 This is a picture in 1993 in one of his laboratory meetings at his house.
00:10:21.01 I was given the opportunity by Dr. Martinez to be part of science.
00:10:26.00 And since then my life began. He was an influential figure in my life.
00:10:34.08 This is 1994. By the time I graduated from UC Berkeley with Honors,
00:10:39.00 I ended up following what my grandfather used to tell me as a young child,
00:10:45.03 â€œDo not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.â€
00:10:52.12 And thanks to Dr. Martinez, I was inspired to then pursue my medical education
00:10:58.03 at Harvard Medical School where I met two other great mentors,
00:11:03.20 Dave Potter and Ed Kravitz.
00:11:06.24 Dr. Potter and Dr. Kravitz were not only role models, but were people
00:11:11.09 who believed that I could actually make a difference in science.
00:11:15.12 But, I never forgot where I came from.
00:11:18.03 This is a picture that I did with two of my classmates, Miguel Canales and Ruben Fragoso,
00:11:24.04 in which we have symbolisms of the Aztec culture by the sun,
00:11:29.07 in which we are all moving upwards in our lives but turning back
00:11:35.06 and trying to help others that are behind.
00:11:38.22 This is the theory of La Escalerita, which is "the ladder,"
00:11:44.11 the ladder to move upwards in our society.
00:11:46.26 I strongly believe that education is the best provision for old age.
00:11:51.09 I was told once, by the time I graduated from Harvard...
00:11:54.22 Here I am at Harvard Medical School giving the commencement speech,
00:11:58.12 chosen by my classmates, and I was reminded what Vince Lombardi once said,
00:12:04.08 "The quality of a person's life is in direct proportion to their commitment to
00:12:10.02 excellence, regardless of the chosen field of endeavor."
00:12:13.23 Here I was, now as a resident, being doctored by my own daughter
00:12:19.12 outside of the operating room and in the operating room using some of the most
00:12:24.23 sophisticated equipment to be able to perform brain surgery.
00:12:29.08 I pursue research, and you will learn more in my next segments,
00:12:34.10 of brain tumors and stem cells, but I was able to work with
00:12:39.10 astrocytes, stars that lie within the brain that we believe are stem cells.
00:12:45.05 How little that I know that that little boy that worked in this little gas station at the age of 5
00:12:50.15 was one day going to be surrounded by incredible stars.
00:12:55.07 This is a picture, a few years ago, of the graduation of some of my residents
00:12:59.25 and to my right is Dr. Alessandro Olivi.
00:13:03.06 Then if you look further, is Dr. Henry Brem and then right next to Dr. Henry Brem
00:13:10.11 is one of the greatest icons of African-American medicine, which is Dr. Ben Carson.
00:13:16.13 I am being surrounded by stars.
00:13:18.27 This is a picture of astrocytes that I use in my research.
00:13:22.22 I get to do and use the most sophisticated equipment
00:13:26.09 in the operating room because I believe that my role as a physician
00:13:32.21 and surgeon and scientist is not only to give hope inside of the operating room,
00:13:38.05 but also outside the operating room through our work.
00:13:41.01 "The brain," I was told once, "is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be ignited."
00:13:47.11 We have a high drop out rate.
00:13:50.03 By the year 2050 we're going to be one of the largest groups,
00:13:54.04 Hispanic population, of this country.
00:13:57.25 1 out of 4 people by 2050 will be of Hispanic descent.
00:14:01.13 If we don't educate them we will not be able to continue to sustain this beautiful country.
00:14:08.03 So I believe that through determination, dedication, discipline, resilience,
00:14:15.05 excitement, admiration and mentorship, we can do great things together.
00:14:22.10 "Success," Winston Churchill once said,
00:14:25.13 "is going from failure to failure without the loss of enthusiasm."
00:14:29.15 I tell my own children that sometimes we fall
00:14:33.03 so we can have an opportunity to get up and try again.
00:14:36.16 I tell my own children the lessons that I learned from my own grandfather,
00:14:40.28 that a fool with a good tool is still a fool.
00:14:45.13 That it is not the tool that matters, but what you do with it.
00:14:49.13 And your education is a tool and the better you use it,
00:14:52.22 the better we will be able to keep this country as beautiful as it is today.
00:14:58.24 I am thankful for the people that have surrounded me.
00:15:02.00 All these young people that keep me energized and vibrant and up-to-date,
00:15:07.09 not only in science, but also in education, in medicine
00:15:11.24 and by continuing to give hope to my patients.
00:15:14.27 I thank you for your attention.
00:15:16.23 Dr. QuiÃ±ones here from Johns Hopkins.

This Talk

Speaker: Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa

Audience:

General Public
Educators of H. School / Intro Undergrad
Student
Educators of Adv. Undergrad / Grad
Researcher
Educators

Recorded: September 2011

Talk Overview

From farm worker to scientist: At age 19, Quiñones-Hinojosa jumped the fence from Mexico to become a farm worker in California. Thanks to his own determination, hard work and discipline and a lot of support from family and friends, he left farm work, completed university and medical school, and ultimately became a highly successful physician-scientist and brain surgeon.

Speaker Bio

Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa

Dr. Quiñones-Hinojosa, affectionately known as Dr. Q, is an Associate Professor of Neurosurgery and Oncology, Neuroscience and Cellular and Molecular Medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He is also director of the Brain Tumor Surgery Program and the Brain Tumor Stem Cell Laboratory where he investigates the role of brain stem cells in… Continue Reading