Mitchell Nascimento grew up in the small town of Harrow, just outside of Windsor, Ontario. He attended the University of Windsor for his BSc in Chemistry, where he did research with the Rawson lab after class and spent summers at the University of Toronto as an NSERC undergraduate researcher with the Santerre lab. He stayed on at UWindsor for his Master’s, while also heading to UC Irvine as a visiting scholar in the Evans lab. Mitchell then worked with the UWindsor Faculty of Science Project Management Team to coordinate the construction of the new University of Windsor Centre of Research. He has since moved to Victoria, BC to pursue his PhD as an NSERC CGS-D student with Prof Ian Manners, working on the discovery of new phosphorus-based polymers and looking at their emergent properties.

Mitch gained interest in politics from his father, who immigrated to Canada and became the first person of Portuguese descent elected to municipal office. “This was my first clear example of why representation matters in politics.  In my area, politicians had a very narrow scope of cultural and educational backgrounds, but my dad brought perspective and experience for a large part of their community they hadn’t considered before.” The appointment of former UWindsor prof Kirsty Duncan as the Minister for Science was the first time Mitch noticed STEM being represented at the federal level in Canada. However, he was surprised to see that southern Ontario had very little STEM representation in their municipal and provincial politics, and after discussions with friends and family it was clear that finding a solution to that proves difficult. “It’s necessary to get people with STEM backgrounds on the ballot, regardless of winning or not. To have an evidence-based approach to politics means we consistently have people with that mindset in a position to do good for their communities, and STEM backgrounds are key to that.”

When Mitch came across Elect STEM, he instantly knew this was something to be involved in. “There was finally an organization with a clear mission to bring more STEM backgrounds to politics, regardless of political affiliation. I was overjoyed to see such a fantastic group of people coming together to achieve that goal!” Working with Elect STEM has given Mitchell a chance to dig deeper into the world of provincial and federal politics. Currently, he’s focusing on identifying current politicians and political candidates with STEM backgrounds across BC and Northern Canada, and hopes to, long-term, look at how an increase in STEM representation affects policy decisions and communities on a provincial level.

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