How Oak Cliff shaped David Reynoso

David Reynoso knew from a young age that he wanted to work in STEM.

“In elementary, actually, I always remember telling this to my teacher. I said, ‘I want to be the first president in space,’” he said. “Perhaps I can still do the space part.”

Reynoso grew up in Oak Cliff, graduating as the 2016 valedictorian from W.H. Adamson High School. His dad attended Adamson as well, immediately following his immigration to the United States from Guadalajara, Mexico. His mother, also an immigrant, came to the U.S. around age 16 or 17, joining relatives who were already living in Dallas.

“Growing up, I immediately sensed the Oak Cliff kind of culture and pride. I know my dad had a lot of pride being here, especially still living here in the Oak Cliff area,” Reynoso said. “Oak Cliff was able to provide him a home at a time where, you know, my parents’ situation was not the best, but they were still able to secure a home and feel the community around him.”

He credits the neighborhood culture as part of what motivates him to keep going.

“There’s just this pride that this neighborhood gives you that perhaps you don’t see in a lot of other places.”

Although Reynoso was born and raised in our neighborhood, his experience in higher education has taken him across the country, from attending the University of Rochester for his bachelor’s in mechanical engineering to internships with The Aerospace Corporation in both Alabama and California. 

“I was actually the oldest of four. I have three younger sisters, and so for me, I think my goal of going so far away is to set an example for my siblings that their options in life are not limited. The world is theirs,” he said.

Currently, Reynoso is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA). He came back to Texas in the middle of the pandemic, beginning grad school virtually as a master’s student before switching to the Ph.D. track. He describes this time as a shift, but a time that also came with opportunity.

“I think a Ph.D. program has a lot of challenges, and just being home helped take care of a lot of things that would have been on my plate. I don’t have to worry about rent. I could commute to school. I took every opportunity that I could being home to help me progress in school,” he said. “And the thing about having parents like mine, me being a first-generation college graduate, is that sometimes it’s hard to explain graduate school to my parents, but all they know is that I’m studying, and they always encourage me to keep studying, keep studying. Go pursue education as much as you can, for as long as you can. And that’s what I did.”

Both nationally and locally, he’s involved with the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers and serves as a mentor through Primos Dallas, a nonprofit mentoring organization out of Pleasant Grove that connects Latino youth with professionals.

Reynoso also founded the Latinx Graduate Student Association at UTA, which he describes as one of his proudest works.

“I’m not actively involved in the leadership anymore, so that makes me even more proud,” he said.

Recently, he secured an upcoming fellowship in Washington, D.C. with the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Graduate Fellowship Program. He hopes to progress his career to become a staff scientist at a national lab like the one in D.C. following his December 2026 graduation, and eventually come back to Dallas to be a professor at a university.

“One thing I saw in undergrad was that a lot of engineering professors … there’s very limited Hispanic representation, especially at UTA where we serve Hispanics, but we don’t see a lot of them leading the classes and teaching and mentoring,” he said. “And so I kind of want to take my experience a couple of years later at an HSI (Hispanic-Serving Institution).”