Jack: But why do you hate it then?

Enrique: It’s because there's almost no resolution. There's almost no goal. This (science) is like a perpetual ongoing thing.

Jack: Yeah.

Enrique: And it’s like, where is the satisfaction? I love thinking about things and I love understanding things. And I love making contributions, and I love all of this. But you’re still waiting for some resolution of some sort.

Jack: But then you get the little resolutions. You get them.

Enrique: A little bit yeah, and it's exciting, but it lasts about a week or a day, and then there's something else.

Jack: But what kind of resolution are you hoping for? Are you hoping that somehow you will reach the knowledge that you need? Or what?

 
Enrique: I don't know. It’s almost like swimming against a tide. You can swim and you can make progress and but its nearly impossible to reach the shore because there's always more that comes.

Jack: But I don't get what your shore is?

Enrique: Oh, I don't either. I guess that's what I'm looking for. I mean maybe that's why I do it. Maybe I have this romantic notion of some form of ah, you know salvation or some meaning from what I do and that's what I'm looking for

Jack: How did you get this far? We are in some sense a product of the choices we make. How did you get here?

Enrique: How did I get here? I've had people, I've placed my trust in people and they've helped me.

Jack: I see, you’re good at that

Enrique: Yeah, I'm all about learning anything from anyone. I know that I can only learn from the people and the things around me. So you know how I got here?
I graduated from high school and then I went to a small college and there were people there that helped me and they got me excited about what I did.
They taught me, um they taught me that I had some talents because — if you knew — (pause) its hard to be self-aware especially when your growing up.
But these, my teachers were very nice and they were very cool and they were very supportive and they taught me that I you know I had some talents and they taught me how to apply them.

Jack: What were the talents?

Enrique: I don't know! [Laughing].

Jack: [Sighs] All right.

Enrique: Maybe it's just -

Jack: You could have been a rock star, you could have been a tree climber, you could have ended up in mechanical engineering, or football. Here you are at a conference about motor proteins

Enrique: Yeah.

Jack: So what got you excited? You can't just have drifted. Did you drift all the way here?

 
Enrique: No its -...

Jack: You're too willful and strong a personality to drift like that

Enrique: Sure. I mean I have had choices. But I listened to the people when I went to graduate school. This sounds bizarre but I graduated my bachelor's degree and I spent a year working and I was tired of living in the New York area. That’s it.

Jack: New York area is where you grew up?

Enrique: Yeah. In Jersey.

Jack: And you are from a real working class background?

Enrique: Oh, absolutely. Working - totally working class background.

Jack: Dad and Mom?

Enrique: Absolutely! Total working class.

Jack: What sort of things?

Enrique: My mother’s a pharmacist and my Dad's he's a factory inspector type of thing.

Jack: Your Mom’s a pharmacist?...

Enrique: Yeah but well see my family’s from Cuba and education is very important there.

Jack: And how's that working class?

Enrique: Well because they came here with nothing. We were working class not by history but by coincidence. They came here with nothing, and so they had to build from ground zero.

Jack: Yeah, but here's your Mom who’s a pharmacist and you’re doing something that's not a million miles away from that.

Enrique: No! Absolutely, I mean I'm here because my family told me about education.
My family was in Cuba and they lost everything and what I remember is my mother saying "The only thing that you know, that you can obtain that people can't take away from you is Knowledge."
And this is this is not necessarily true, but this was their perception because they lost everything. They lost their family, they lost their materials, they lost their country, they lost their identity, they lost everything due to a political revolution, except they still had their minds and they still had their memories and they still had their hearts.
So naturally education's important. My sister is a pharmacist too, my brother went to the University too… and I went to the University.
But my environment was different.
My best friend worked in a gas station, my other friend worked in a factory, the other guy works in a book store. You know these are very much dead-end middle class neighborhoods. And if my family hadn’t experienced the Cuban revolution, yeah, I'd probably have more in common with these [referring to scientists] people, at least historically, in my experiences. But when we grew up - I mean there were six of us living in like a 2 room apartment.

Jack: Four kids 2 parents?

Enrique: Uh, 2 parents, 3 kids, 1 aunt.

Jack: Right.

Enrique: It was a neighborhood in Newark, New Jersey. And then when I was about 5 or 6 we moved out. I mean progress, slow progress, and my family worked and we moved into a town which had a reasonable reasonably good educational system. This was my parents’ concern, they wanted us to be in a good public school system.
I think we couldn't afford private school you know, so had to go some place where there was a good public school system. But this was a predominantly middle class/working class neighborhood.
And factory workers mostly. This type of environment is the environment I grew up in. My friends, they’re still doing what we were doing when we were 15 and 16. Notably, playing music, going out, drinking beer and that's it.

Jack: That's it.

Enrique: You know and I tried to break free from there

Jack: That's right.

Enrique: And and so that's what happened you know. I - at the time I didn't see any hope at all, and I was just dying there.
I was saying get me away from here. I'm just dying a little bit, little by little, every day.

Jack: We can go towards your science or we can go we can stay with your background in this discussion. I'm happy to do both or mix and match.

Enrique: Okay.

Jack: It's just that I don't want you to waste the space that we’ll give you in the magazine. You'll get a copy of it and you can -

Enrique: Oh! You're going to quote me word for word.

Jack: You can correct it. It won’t be published until you’ve read it

Enrique: (Laughing) Oh, okay

Jack: Its very good what you have been saying

Enrique: (Still laughing) Whoops!!

Jack: Let's leave it all t in, don’t you think?

Enrique: All right.

Jack: These guys lat this conference love you, they respect you, they rate you.

Enrique: I wish they'd tell me. (Laughing)