Adilene Bernal Sánchez was always fascinated with physical structures. During her youth, her parents encouraged her and her siblings’ curiosity, fostering a household that prized creativity and mechanistic minds. The family worked with their hands, fixing things around the house together. That fascination with physical structures extended to schooling.   

“One of my earliest academic memories is a school project where we had to go outside every evening, look at the moon and draw it,” Bernal Sánchez recalled. “Because of that, I learned the phases of the moon.” 

But outside of the school day, Bernal Sánchez’s intellectual pursuits were self-driven. Unlike some of her peers in surrounding Orange County, she didn’t have the opportunity to participate in extracurricular activities. The eldest daughter in a five-sibling household, Bernal Sánchez bore the responsibility of caring for her siblings while her parents, who emigrated from México, worked tirelessly to build a stable life in the United States of America. 

“My parents had a vision for coming here, a vision of, ‘We’re coming here, we’re going to get citizenship and then after that, we’re going to work so that we’re able to buy a home, so that our kids don’t have to get kicked out of where they live,’” Bernal Sánchez said. “They were able to accomplish all of that even without knowing the language and the racism against Mexican immigrants in Southern California.”

“Because I didn’t have the privilege of extracurriculars,” Bernal Sánchez added, “I found ways to follow my interests. I taught myself how to read and write Egyptian hieroglyphs when I was 9 years old.” 

Bernal Sánchez’s parents had a mantra: Todo a su tiempo. Everything in its own time. 

“Even if you’re not getting to that goal just yet,” Bernal Sánchez said, “you just need to keep trying and you will get there, even if you don’t have the resources. It will just take longer. You play the long game.” 

Bernal Sánchez has carried this tenacity with her throughout her life. Today, she’s a doctoral candidate in the Department of Chemistry, working in the Franz Research Group. 

A synthetic organic chemist, Bernal Sánchez specializes in organosilicon chemistry — the synthesis and design of compounds with the element silicon in them. This foundational research is of particular interest due to new structural knowledge as well as these compounds’ potential applications in materials science and medicinal chemistry. 

“Silicon is interesting because it can make molecules that have special chemical reactivity,” Bernal Sánchez says. “It’s kind of like polymer materials, related to elastics, mixed with a little bit of inorganic chemistry, related to rocks and metals. And it can also be mixed with organic chemistry for a lot of different unique opportunities." 

Much like humans, organic molecules can be left- or right-handed. That “handedness” dictates many properties . For instance, one hand of a drug molecule may be therapeutic for a disease while the other hand may not.  

“I get to explore the handedness of organosilicon compounds called stereogenic silicon,” Bernal Sánchez said. “It’s been so cool because it reminded me of working with my hands since I was a kid and the topic I loved most in organic chemistry as an undergraduate.”

A tenacious drive

A first-generation college student, Bernal Sánchez’s path to higher education was aided by the values instilled in her by her parents. But it wasn’t without setbacks. She graduated high school during the height of the Great Recession, an economic downturn that resulted in both her parents losing one of the two jobs they each held to help the family survive. 

“We all had to work to not lose our home,” Bernal Sánchez wrote in an essay published in Science. “I spent seven years working multiple jobs while slowly amassing community college credits, sometimes just one class at a time.”

The death of Bernal Sánchez’s high school friend Charlie from cystic fibrosis prompted her to pursue her dreams. With enough college credits amassed, she decided to transfer to Sonoma State University in 2017, majoring in both chemistry and mathematics. 

While there, she was named a McNair Scholar and was advised by Professor Steven Farmer, an alum of the UC Davis Department of Chemistry.

“I felt really comfortable with Dr. Farmer because he was a first-generation student, so he understood what I was going through,” Bernal Sánchez said. 

What’s more, the chemistry conducted in Farmer’s classes and labs intrigued Bernal Sánchez. As graduation inched closer, she was at a crossroads. Her initial intent was to pursue medical school, but her experiences with Farmer led Bernal Sánchez to consider the Ph.D. route. 

As Bernal Sánchez writes in her essay, “When I told Dr. Farmer about my plans, he asked a simple question: Do I like chemical synthesis more than the prospect of practicing medicine?” 

Bernal Sánchez looked at her hands one day in lab. She reflected on the handedness of molecular compounds and the work she did with her family growing up. She realized she had her answer. 

UC Davis and beyond

Bernal Sánchez is now at the tail-end of her doctoral studies. With an expected graduation date of 2025, she hopes to pursue a postdoctoral fellowship in total synthesis — the complete synthesis of complex molecules from simple precursors. 

“I want to go to another country to do it, and I mean, what better way to explore another country than through organic chemistry, right?” Bernal Sánchez said. “I feel like I’m just starting to have fun in the lab.” 

While at UC Davis, Bernal Sánchez has brought her personal experiences to the mentorship she provides to others. For her, the guiding light has been following instinct.

“Continue following the pull,” she said. “For me, I kept feeling this pull towards certain directions and certain people and I just kept following it. It’s important to ask for help, but if you don’t even know what questions to ask, it’s important to find people that can understand what’s going on in your life.”