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When Roc\u00edo Alejandra Ch\u00e1vez Santoscoy<\/strong><\/a>, a research professor from the School of Engineering and Sciences<\/strong><\/a> at Tec de Monterrey<\/a>, turned 15<\/strong>, she didn\u2019t want a party or a crinoline dress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Instead, she asked her mom, a cardiovascular anesthesiologist, to let her observe a heart surgery<\/strong>. So, she had a front-row seat to watch the patient\u2019s blood flow through the extracorporeal circulation machine, the organ stop beating, be operated upon, and activated again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI watched my mom, and all her colleagues, as if they were heroes doing amazing things. It was astonishing to realize what medical science can do for the<\/strong> health<\/strong><\/a> of human beings<\/strong>,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The doctors managed to anesthetize, intubate, operate, and resuscitate the patient without complication. Miracles that save lives<\/strong>, but which are everyday skills for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It appeared as though medicine would be Alejandra\u2019s chosen profession, given that her father was also a doctor, but she says that, \u201cThere was a lot of blood\u201d in that profession and she didn\u2019t like that. Besides, she was passionate about math and chemistry<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Her path wasn\u2019t too far off, because she\u2019s aiming to improve Mexicans\u2019 quality of life through biotechnology by finding active compounds in foods that help to prevent diseases such as cancer.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Discovering the world through the eyes of a child<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The famous American astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson<\/strong> says that \u201call kids are born scientists,\u201d because they\u2019re always looking under rocks<\/strong>, exploring the world, and wondering why things happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, children\u2019s curiosity is stopped by the minds of many adults who limit their explorations and discoveries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He says that scientists are children who have managed to retain a sense of wonder at basic aspects of nature.<\/strong> This is the case with Alejandra Ch\u00e1vez. Perhaps much of that is because her family always encouraged her curiosity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On birthdays and Christmases, she would receive chemistry kits and microscopes<\/strong>, and her parents let their children assemble and disassemble things around the house to see what they were like inside and find out answers on their own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI always had a very analytical mindset<\/strong> and always wondered about the reason for things. I really liked to investigate and get to the answer,\u201d says the leading biotechnologist at the TecBASE National Genome Sequencing Laboratory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ever since she was a little girl, she was familiar with human health. There was always talk of research at home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Shining with her own light<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Roc\u00edo Alejandra Ch\u00e1vez Santoscoy was born in Guadalajara in 1987, but when she was four years old, her family moved to Ciudad Obreg\u00f3n, in Sonora. She\u2019s older than her twin sister by one minute<\/strong>, and has another brother who is four years younger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The researcher says that she and her siblings studied elementary education in public schools<\/strong>, but they were told in a talk about the Tec\u2019s high school and she and her sister fell in love with the idea of studying there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But it wasn\u2019t all that easy. \u201cI fell in love with the Tec. I wanted to study there, but it was very difficult for my family. One day, my mom told me: \u2018Find a way to get there, because I can\u2019t afford that.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n