Ximena Cid
TIPS Professional Development
About
Ximena C. Cid, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Physics at California State University, Dominguez Hills.
Ximena Cid received her bachelor’s degree in astrophysics from University of California, Berkeley and her master’s and Ph.D. in physics from the University of Texas, Arlington. She completed a postdoctoral research position at the University of Washington and joined the faculty at California State University, Dominguez Hills (CSUDH), a designated Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) and Minority Serving Institution (MSI) located in Carson, CA, in August 2015.
Ximena identifies as a Yaqui and Chicana woman. She is one of only a few dozen self-identified indigenous physics professionals in the United States. Ximena has spent her career researching how to make physics more accessible to general audiences. Her publications describe relationships between how one uses their mind to understand complex abstract ideas like gravitational fields and electromagnetic fields and more recently, areas associated with equity, diversity, and inclusion in STEM fields. She has expertise in understanding challenges that impact populations from diverse backgrounds in their pursuit of careers in physics and other STEM fields. As an Indigenous Chicana scholar in a field dominated by white males, she is dedicated to making physics and space sciences more inclusive for diverse populations.
Ximena has led national and local Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion workshops for physics teachers, professionals with expertise in Discipline-based Education Research (DBER) in STEM, professional societies, STEM professors, and Higher Education Administrators. Her work is grounded in her lived experiences as well as the research regarding barriers that impact traditionally marginalized populations in STEM.
Her professional engagements include serving as past board member for the National Society of Hispanic Physicists (NSHP), a past committee member for the American Association of Physics Teachers’ Committee on Diversity (AAPT COD), Member of the American Physical Society’s (APS) Forum on Education (FEd) and is a life member for the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS). More recently, she, along with colleagues, co-founded of the Society of Indigenous Physicists (SIP) in 2020. She is one of the first, if not the first, self-identified indigenous person to have chaired a physics department and one of few Chicana/Latinas to do the same in the Country.
As a board member of NSHP she was the primary organizer for the annual Día de la Física/Day of Physics conference (DdlF). The DdlF was created to provide students attendees an opportunity to learn about cutting edge physics (and related fields), create a sense of community, and to provide resources to help students and professionals connect and find mentors. The DdlF conference is geared toward Latinx and Native American students and is welcome and open environment for students from all backgrounds.
Her dedication to providing opportunities for all students, especially those from marginalized backgrounds has been recognized nationally as she was awarded the Homer L. Dodge Citation for Service from the American Association of Physics Teachers July 2018. The AAPT also recognized her work and contributions to the field by honoring her as a Fellow of the society at the annual winter meeting in January 2021.