Howard Garrison Advocacy Fellow

Jocelyn Olvera

Jocelyn Olvera is a graduate student at the University of California San Diego. 

Describe your interest in participating in the Howard Garrison Advocacy Fellowship. 
Olvera: In Washington, D.C., I stood outside a congressional office holding a one-pager on HIV drug resistance. I had two minutes to explain why it mattered.

Inside, a staffer listened as I made the case: drug-resistant HIV is on the rise, particularly in communities with limited access to care. We need stronger surveillance systems. We need sustained research funding. We need scientists at the table. The moment was brief. Direct. Unscripted. But it shifted something in me. I walked out of that building knowing exactly what I wanted: to bring science out of the lab and into the rooms where decisions are made. Since that day at the AAAS CASE Workshop, I’ve leaned into science advocacy with growing urgency.

As a doctoral student researching how HIV mutates to escape treatment, I’ve seen how our work at the bench intersects with issues of access, equity, and public health. But data alone doesn’t drive change. Policy does.

That’s why I volunteer with the National Breast Cancer Coalition, helping patient advocates understand the science behind the policies they’re fighting for. It’s why I’ve served in graduate student government and now lead as Vice President of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion for graduate and professional students at the University of California, San Diego. It’s why I continue to co-organize events through my lab and non-profit organizations like Nucleate, working to ensure that underrepresented voices in STEM are not just included, but empowered. And it’s why I’m enrolled in a science communication certification program at UC San Diego, to ensure I can speak clearly to the communities most affected by science policy.

The Howard Garrison Advocacy Fellowship is the next step in this journey. I’m especially drawn to the opportunity to develop an independent advocacy project with expert mentorship. I plan to design and launch a campus-wide science policy workshop series focused on civic engagement, policy writing, and local health issues, beginning with HIV education and research equity in San Diego. My goal is to help shape a culture where researchers see advocacy not as an add-on, but as a meaningful part of what it means to do science. More than training, I’m looking for a community. I want to learn alongside others who believe that science should inform policy and that scientists should be skilled in communicating with the public with clarity and conviction. 

Science doesn’t speak for itself. It needs people who can listen, translate, and act. I’m working to be one of them.

How do you plan to use the knowledge and experience gained through your participation in the Howard Garrison Advocacy Fellowship?
Olvera: Some of the most impactful work I’ve done hasn’t happened alone. It’s happened in collaboration with students organizing for change, researchers sharing personal stories, and mentors guiding me through unfamiliar spaces. That’s the kind of work I want to keep doing. I’m developing a science policy and civic engagement series at UC-San Diego for graduate and professional students. The program will focus on advocacy skills such as writing policy memos, highlighting research funding, and health equity. It’s inspired in part by the University of California, Los Angeles Science Policy Group, whose meetings I’ve attended, and will be grounded in the needs of local communities.

Using my position in student government, I plan to expand our science policy group beyond biomedical sciences to include students from engineering, environmental research, and the social sciences. Advocacy is stronger when it brings disciplines together.

Beyond campus, I want to connect my research to communities affected by health disparities. I study human immunodeficiency viruses (HIV), a virus that spreads person to person, but I’m also interested in how environmental pathogens impact health. As a SCUBA Diversity Fellow, I’m collaborating with a graduate student and a nonprofit to quantify viral pathogens in San Diego’s coastal waters. Both efforts reflect a shared goal: ensuring science serves the people most affected by its outcomes.

FASEB’s emphasis on mentorship, skill-building, and sustained advocacy aligns perfectly with this vision. It will also help me prepare a competitive AAAS fellowship application and pay that training forward.

Using no more than 250 words, describe your research as you would to a non-scientist.
Olvera: HIV affects over 40 million people globally. While today’s treatments have turned it from a deadly disease into a manageable condition, that progress is fragile. HIV is constantly changing. Over time, the virus can outsmart the very drugs we rely on to control it.

That’s where my research comes in. I study how HIV becomes drug-resistant by looking at how small changes in its structure can make a big difference in whether treatment works. I focus on a class of medications that stop the virus from hijacking a person’s DNA. When they’re effective, the virus is blocked from spreading. But some forms of HIV carry subtle changes, called mutations, that allow it to slip past the drugs and keep infecting healthy cells.

One version of the virus I study carries three of these mutations, which work together to make treatment far less effective. My research asks how these changes weaken the drugs’ ability to stop the virus and what we can do to stay one step ahead. To answer that, I look closely at the virus using specialized imaging tools and lab techniques to understand where the drugs fail and why. My goal is to uncover patterns that can guide the design of better treatments, ones that are harder for the virus to escape.

Drug resistance doesn’t stop with HIV. What we learn here can also help us respond to other fast-evolving viruses. The more we understand how resistance works, the better prepared we are to protect public health in the future.

Briefly describe any past or present participation in additional career exploration activities, experiences, and/or programs.
Olvera: I didn’t set out to pursue a career in science policy, but the more I followed the work that moved me, the clearer it became. At the AAAS CASE Workshop, I realized advocacy wasn’t just something scientists could do; it was something we should do. Meeting with policymakers about HIV research funding made the stakes of my work real and urgent.

Since then, I’ve sought out experiences that connect research with impact. Annually, I volunteer with the National Breast Cancer Coalition, helping patient advocates understand the science behind their policy goals. These conversations have taught me how to earn trust, speak with clarity, and center the people most affected by health policy.

I also stay informed at the biotech level. I supported a Johnson & Johnson event in San Diego that convened the NIH, FDA, and other agencies to share regulatory updates with the private sector. It offered a front-row view of how policy decisions shape innovation before reaching the public.

At UC San Diego, I’ve served as a departmental representative in graduate student government, ensuring student voices are included in campus-wide decisions. I mentor through SACNAS and Nucleate, lead science communication initiatives, and recently began environmental health work as a SCUBA DIVERsity Fellow at Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Each of these experiences has deepened my belief that science matters most when it helps shape decisions that improve lives.

Jocelyn Olvera is a member of American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, a FASEB member society.