Contact Information

Arizona State University
Associate Professor, School of Mathematical and Natural Sciences

erika.camacho@utsa.edu
http://www.public.asu.edu/~etcamach/

Biography

Dr. Erika T. Camacho grew up in East Los Angeles and was taught by Jaime Escalante at Garfield High School.  She received her B.A. in Mathematics and Economics from Wellesley College.  After earning her Ph.D. in applied mathematics at Cornell University, she spent a year as a researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory. She then held a tenure-track faculty position at Loyola Marymount University before joining the faculty at ASU in 2007. She was a 2013-2014 MLK Visiting Assistant Professor of Mathematics at MIT. 

She has personally mentored in significant and prolonged ways over 615 undergraduate and graduate students. She co-founded the Applied Mathematical Sciences Summer Institute (AMSSI, 2005-2007), a summer research program dedicated to the recruitment of undergraduate women, underrepresented minorities, and those that might not otherwise have the opportunity. 102 of her mentees have earned Ph.D.s (82 URMs and 59 women with 28 Latinas, 37 Latinos, 8 African American (AA) females, 9 AA males, and 23 non-URM females) from AMSSI and other summer research programs she co-directed or worked with and an additional 44 have M.S. degrees with many students remaining in the pipeline. She also wrote and obtained grants from the NSF and NSA totaling $1,888,532 to support 122 undergraduates in research through AMSSI, MTBI, and NSF’s UBM at Loyola Marymount University (2005-2007, 2013-2018).  She has directly supervised the research of 89 undergraduates, with 30 receiving conference award recognitions.

Dr. Camacho published the first set of mechanistic models addressing photoreceptor degeneration. While experimental physiologists have been working on this area for decades, Dr. Camacho has provided a new framework through which experimentalists can examine retina degeneration and catalyzed a number of papers and investigations by other researchers. Her work examines the mechanisms and interactions of photoreceptors that are critical to their functionality and viability with the ultimate goal of stopping blindness. She uses analytical and computational approaches to uncover new mechanisms and principles that are key, test and suggest hypotheses, as well as explore potential treatments. She currently collaborates with experimentalists and experts on retina from the Vision institute of Paris, Massachusetts Ear and Eye Infirmary, and UMass Medical School and other mathematicians.  Her other research is at the interface of mathematics, biology, and sociology.

Her leadership, scholarship, and mentoring have won her many national and regional recognition including the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education (AAHHE), HENAAC/Great Minds in STEM Education Award, the SACNAS Distinguished Undergraduate Mentoring Award, the Hispanic Women Corporation National Latina Leadership Award, one of 12 Emerging Scholars by Diverse: Issues in Higher Education, one of the 40 Hispanic Leaders Under 40 Award, the Victoria Foundation Higher Education Outstanding STEM Award, the ASU Faculty Women’s Association Outstanding Faculty Mentoring Award, ASU 2017 Commission on Status of Women Outstanding Achievement and Contribution Award, and many more. Her national service is exceptional and ranges from mentoring at all levels to Associate Editor for the Bulletin of Mathematical Biology to Board member for SACNAS and many other advisory boards.

She has been profiled and featured in multiple media outlets including VME/PBS’s series Generation STEM, Local NPR (KJZZ 91.5) on Latinas in STEM Careers, Univision Nightly Spanish News in a two-part segment entitled “Erika Camacho’s Inspirational Story”, the SIAM News “The Intersecting Lives of Two Mathematicians in East L.A.”, in three SACNAS News Feature Articles, Latino Perspectives Magazine “Camacho stands and delivers”, and Voces magazine “I am the American Dream: Erika Tatiana Camacho, Ph.D.”. She has been interviewed on CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News as part of a segment in honor of her high school teacher Jaime Escalante, in PBS Arizona Horizonte for her HWC Leadership Award, and on NPR’s KJZZ about the importance of Latinas in STEM careers in March 2017.

Dr. Camacho’s passion is to continue the work and legacy of her mentors: to create opportunities for those individuals from marginalized communities and make graduate education attainable to them through intensive research. She truly believes that education is what allows individuals to follow their passion, excel even when the odds against this are many, and realize their dreams. In her own words, "STEM education is what allows us to shape and mold our lives and that of future generations to come. It is the biggest equalizer of life.”