Aiyana Emigh Cortez

WORK HISTORY

EDUCATION

ABOUT AIYANA EMIGH CORTEZ

Experienced educator, passionate advocate, interdisciplinary researcher.Dr. Aiyana Cortez is a PhD-trained scientist with interests in state-wide policy, science education, and social determinants of health. Their current position is with the California State Senate as a Legislative Aide for Senator Ben Allen staffing Health, Housing, Human Services, Local Government, Public Safety, and LGBTQ issue areas. Previously, they were a policy consultant as the Science Fellow with the Senate Housing Committee.Before, Dr. Cortez leveraged their communication and scientific background to advance health equity and impact assessment projects at the California Initiative to Advance Precision Medicine within the Governor\'s Office of Planning and Research. Dr. Cortez has also led youth development and gender equity initiatives and successfully advocated for organizational policy reform while serving as a math and science teacher trainer with the US Peace Corps in The Gambia, West Africa. While completing their graduate studies, Dr. Cortez served as an advocate for their graduate program - co-founding a wellness and social equity partnership for faculty and students, reforming advising and accountability, organizing a bimonthly science equity seminar series, and establishing an annual student and faculty conference.Trained formally as a computational biophysicist, Dr. Cortez has 10+ years of laboratory research experience, including designing and implementing long-term projects, collecting data, analyzing and interpreting results, clearly communicating findings to a variety of audiences, and identifying and initiating collaborations with others.