CBC Hispanic Heritage Student Spotlight: Ivanna Zuniga, Biochemistry

"Hello! My name is Ivanna Zuniga and I am currently a third year Biochemistry major with a second major in music and minor in art history. While I was born and raised in Tucson, a large part of my left has been spent going back and forth between the US and Mexico to visit and spend time with family, often spending most of my weekends when I was younger in Mexico. I am currently part of Dr. Thomas Tomasiak's laboratory which is giving me a lot of hands-on experience with different techniques and has been a very enjoyable and eye-opening experience into the world of research, something I had little to no idea about prior to coming to university. My main plan after graduation is to hopefully go into medical school, something I have dreamt of and been working towards since I was still in middle school!  

My parents immigrated to the United States about a year and a half before I was born, so I have grown up seeing them adapt to the lifestyle here along with the amount of work my father has put in to put our family at a better economical level. Coming into the US with only the equivalent of a technical degree, my father often works more than 60 hours a week as a service technician for construction and mining equipment and has never been the type of person to say no to additional training and work, now having a multitude of certifications. Growing up around that drive to work and learn has always inspired me to continue to push myself to learn and improve, always opening myself to new opportunities that could help me in the future and largely why I went down the path of postsecondary education."