Christopher Huerta is an intern with La Jolla Institute for Immunology, a 2024 recipient of the Prebys Foundation’s Youth Workforce grant.
This grant supports nonprofit organizations providing paid internships and apprenticeships to advance early career opportunities for youth in San Diego County.
Christopher’s Story:
“When I was in middle school, my mom was going through a divorce with my dad. Unfortunately, she didn’t have the best support system, and she turned to substance use to cope with a lot of the loneliness she was feeling. I was young and our family didn’t know how to support her.
One night, she got in a car accident, under the influence and was hospitalized. She was in a coma and the accident left her with an irreversible brain injury that the doctors described left her with the mental state of a child. It was that experience that gave me exposure to different neurologists who were seeing what routes we could take to support her.
This experience got me interested in the field. Once I got to UCSD, I started exploring neuroscience and how it connects to medicine and pathology, and I realized I wanted to pursue this in the future.
I come from an underserved background. My family grew up poor, and my original route of higher education was going to be community college. But the PATHS Scholar Program provides scholarships throughout the four years of undergrad. So, once I heard about the program and the resources they provide, I decided to apply to UCSD and I hoped to commit to that pathway if I got accepted into PATHS.
One of the resources PATHS provides is connections to different internships. Over the course of the last school year, I was able to connect with the La Jolla Institute for Immunology. LJI allowed me to see that being a scientist is an actual option. Where I’m from in Hemet, a small town in Riverside County, that’s just not seen as an option. My educational journey there was one where students drop out for various reasons or turn towards substance use as well from an early age. I do consider myself lucky to be one of the ones who can be here and look back and appreciate that journey.
So, LJI was able to clear a path for me. I am very set on going into medicine. I want to be a doctor.
I will be able to graduate a year early from college. One of the options a PATHS mentor gave me was that I could pursue my master’s in that year. So, by the end of those four years of college, I’d come out with my bachelor’s and my master’s. And UCSD has a BS/MS program where they combine those pathways.
Through my time here, since LJI is connected to UCSD, I will be able to pursue my master’s in the next two years. And I’m really excited for that, I didn’t know this was possible through my internship. I thought I was going to walk in, have an experience and it would just end there as a memory.
But the internship with LJI ended up being like a foundational moment in my scientific career. The LJI program had a lot of structure and staff here have been just great in making me feel included. I am fortunate to have this as a place where I can continue for the next two years and beyond.
I shared my experience and interest in neurobiology, and now I’m here working in immunology. The fields seem separate. But in talking with my mentors here at LJI, the intersectionality exists. Immunology isn’t narrowed down to a specific part of the body or a specific system.
What I’ve always been interested in is the disease side of neurology. I want to understand what sort of experiments can be done to study more about how our immune system fights brain injuries and brain diseases. But to take that even further, I’d like to be able to apply that more fiercely in the field of medicine. That’s dreaming big.”
- Christopher Huerta, La Jolla Insitute for Immunology Intern, UCSD Undergraduate Student
This profile is a feature for People de San Diego, a storytelling project by the Prebys Foundation highlighting valuable community members of San Diego County.
