Arismel ‘Ari’ Tena Meza, a soon-to-graduate Ph.D. student in organic chemistry from the Garg group, is profiled in the UCLA Newsroom.
From UCLA Newsroom (by Ben Paul):
Arismel Tena Meza is graduating with a Ph.D. in organic chemistry and an education that goes beyond the lab.
Arismel Tena Meza, known to her friends and mentors as Ari, has traveled an extraordinary path to reach this year’s UCLA commencement stage, where she celebrates earning her Ph.D. degree in chemistry.
Her journey began over a thousand miles away in Michoacán, Mexico, in a small rancho surrounded by farmland. At the age of 5, she immigrated to the United States with her mother and five siblings, joining her father, who was working in California’s fields through the Bracero program. Soon, the reunited family settled in Salinas, California, a small agricultural town where her parents picked strawberries and raised their family in a modest trailer park.
Growing up in a community of farmworkers was not always easy, but it gave Tena Mezaan important perspective. “We didn’t have much, but we had what we needed,” she said. “My parents worked so hard to give us a better life, and they always reminded us how important education was.”
Even as a child, Tena Meza dreamed of improving the conditions of farmworkers like her parents. In high school, she joined her local city council and other government organizations, believing an education in political science was the key to creating change.
But there was one problem with that path: Tena Meza loved science. Like, truly loved it. As an undergrad at UC Berkeley, she intended to major in political science, but she kept a chemistry minor out of sheer interest. It wasn’t long before chemistry became her focus. An encounter with Berkeley professor Markita Landry, who described her groundbreaking research on plant nanomaterials to enhance plant growth, opened Tena Meza’s eyes to how science could address global and local challenges. “That talk was the moment everything clicked for me,” she said. “I realized I could combine my passion for helping people in my community with my growing love for chemistry.”
Soon, Ari had changed her major to chemistry, where she now saw the potential to improve human health. After a pharmaceutical internship and doing organic chemistry research with another encouraging mentor, Berkeley professor Dean F. Toste, she decided to pursue her Ph.D. degree at UCLA with professor Neil K. Garg. At UCLA, she immersed herself in fundamental chemistry research as she pursued a Ph.D., while exploring new ways to synthesize complex compounds.
In fact, earlier this year, Tena Meza published a first-author paper in Nature, reporting on making a breakthrough in coupling strained molecules to create medicinally significant compounds. “It’s exciting to think that something we discovered in the lab could someday help save lives,” she said.
Tena Meza credited UCLA advisors like Garg, Landry and Toste with helping her navigate the challenges of academia for first-generation college students. “For students like me who don’t always have the support system or resources to succeed in challenging science majors, mentorship is more than a nice bonus; it is a literal lifeline,” she said.
At UCLA, with that personal experience in mind, Tena Meza co-founded “Empower Diversity in STEM,” a program that connects students to labs for hands-on experiments and mentoring. She also served as co-president of the Organization of Cultural Diversity in Science (OCDS), where she worked to increase access to STEM fields for underrepresented groups. Her outreach efforts extend to middle and high schools, where she spoke to students, encouraging them to pursue higher education and careers in science.
The culture at UCLA, and in Garg’s lab specifically, played an important role in teaching Tena Meza how to be a leader in science. “Professor Garg has so many initiatives devoted to educating young people about science and reaching out to communities,” she said. “No one asked him to set up programs like Chem Kids that have impacted so many kids’ lives. He just did it, and that really opened my eyes to what science education should really look like.”
After graduation, Tena Meza will be taking a position as a process chemist at Gilead Sciences, where she will contribute to the development of scalable production methods for medicinal drugs, bringing life-saving treatments from the lab to patients. But, she intends to remain committed to the programs and connections she made at UCLA and local schools even after graduation.
“If I could give one piece of advice to current or future students who might see their own experience in my story, it’s this: find mentors and build a community. At UCLA, you’re lucky to have people here ready and eager to help you succeed in school and life. You might, at times, feel misunderstood or even lost. But you are certainly never alone.”
