“Her capabilities are equally matched by her performance in academia and perseverance maintained during multiple hardships she encountered, resulting in unequivocal strength as an individual and keen passion for drug discovery research.”

Mary Villarreal is a PhD candidate in Chemical Biology who has demonstrated remarkable persistence in her education. As a young person, Mary experienced a traumatic event that made an indelible impact on her life. Yet with characteristic resilience, self-reflection, and drive, Mary succeeded in her classes by the end of that difficult year. Through this experience, Mary proved to herself that hardships do not have to be defining and instead can be used as fuel and motivation for a better life.

Mary went on to earn her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in chemistry, demonstrating continued persistence through systemic challenges as a first-generation college student and Latina woman in STEM. Mary excelled through two years of intensive undergraduate research at UC Irvine and three summer research programs encompassing multiple subfields of chemistry and biology, and was awarded a Minority Biomedical Research Support-Research Initiative for Scientific Enhancement Graduate Fellowship through the NIH for her MS degree in chemistry. Now pursuing doctoral studies at U-M — all while raising her two children — Mary is recognized as an “outstanding aspiring scientist.” She ultimately intends to become a research and development scientist at a pharmaceutical company with a focus on developing therapeutics for human diseases.

Mary is also committed to helping others persist and has long taken an active role as a mentor. During her undergraduate years, Mary led chemistry outreach demonstrations at underrepresented K-12 schools and served as a formal mentor through a campus program for underrepresented minorities, and she currently participates in U-M’s STEM mentoring program. Reflecting on her personal and academic achievements, one of Mary’s mentors remarks, “Her capabilities are equally matched by her performance in academia and perseverance maintained during multiple hardships she encountered, resulting in unequivocal strength as an individual and keen passion for drug discovery research.”

CEW+ commends Mary’s persistence and names her an Irma M. Wyman Scholar.