An Evening with José Hernández--'Reaching for Your Own Stars: A Recipe to Succeed in Life' Thursday, September 12, 2024
7:00 PM - 8:00 PM

The Davidson Distinguished Lecture Series presents a lecture by José Hernández, former migrant farmworker turned NASA astronaut, barrier-breaking engineer, entrepreneur and inspiration for the Amazon Prime film A Million Miles Away.

This event is FREE; tickets are not required for General Admission seating. 

Contact the Midland College Foundation, (432) 685-4526, for information about preferred seating opportunities for Midland College Distinguished Donors and Friends of the Series ($1,000 minimum donation to help support MC programs and services).

About José Hernández

NASA engineer José Hernández wanted to fly in space ever since he heard that the first Hispanic-American had been chosen to travel into space.

"When I was a senior in high school, I was hoeing a row of sugar beets in a field near Stockton, CA, and I heard on my transistor radio that Franklin Chang-Diaz had been selected for the Astronaut Corps," Hernández remembered. "I was already interested in science and engineering, but that was the moment I said, 'I want to fly in space.' And that's something I strove for each day since."

His hard work paid off. Hernández was selected as part of the 19th class of astronauts in 2004. In 2006, he completed Astronaut Candidate Training, and in 2009, he was a mission specialist on the STS-128 mission on board the Space Shuttle, Discovery.

One of four children in a migrant farming family, Hernández--who didn't learn English until he was 12 years old--spent much of his childhood traveling between Mexico and southern California depending on the season, picking strawberries and cucumbers at farms along the route.

After graduating high school in Stockton, Hernández enrolled at the University of the Pacific in Stockton.  He earned a degree in electrical engineering and was awarded a full scholarship to the graduate program at the University of California in Santa Barbara, where he continued his engineering studies. In 1987, he accepted a full-time job with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory where he had worked as a co-op in college. While at Lawrence Livermore, Hernández worked on signal and image processing applications in radar imaging, computed tomography and acoustic imaging.

Later in his career, Hernández worked on developing quantitative x-ray film imaging analysis techniques for the x-ray laser program. Hernández applied these techniques in the medical physics arena and co-developed the first full-field digital mammography imaging system. This system has proven useful for detecting breast cancer at an earlier stage than present film/screen mammography techniques. Hernández has won recognition awards for his work on this project.

He has also worked in the international arena where he represented Lawrence Livermore and the U.S. Department of Energy on Russian nuclear non-proliferation issues. During the astronaut application process, Hernández had to meet with a review board. That's where he came face-to-face with his original inspiration: Franklin Chang-Diaz.

"It was a strange place to find myself, being evaluated by the person who gave me the motivation to get there in the first place," Hernández said. " I found that we actually had common experiences--a similar upbringing, the same language issues. That built up my confidence. Any barriers that existed, he had already hurdled them.  Now it's my turn.”

Since leaving NASA, he served as the executive director of Strategic Operations at MEI Technologies in Texas. In 2012, he ran for the U.S. House of Representatives in the 10th California Congressional District.

Hernández recently received the 2016 National Hispanic Hero Award presented by the United States Hispanic Leadership Institute.

As CEO of Tierra Luna Engineering, LLC, José Hernández continues his long history in the field of engineering and space.