He came alone from Cuba to Miami as a teen. Next stop: a prestigious university

David Alejandro Ramírez Núñez’s mother often told stories about his early love for math — like the time he was just 5 years old riding a bus and asking her to pull out a calculator so she could quiz him.

Now 20, Ramírez left his home in Havana, Cuba, at 17, determined to pursue his dream of studying in the United States. On Saturday, he walked across the stage at loanDepot park during Miami Dade College’s commencement ceremony, graduating with a 3.95 GPA and a degree in mechanical engineering. He is also a co-author of a mathematics paper published by Cornell University.

His next stop: the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

While several factors influenced his decision to leave Cuba, Ramírez said the most important was his desire for a stronger academic future. In doing so, he left behind his mother and grandmother — who raised him — as well as childhood memories of afternoons spent playing with friends before dedicating himself to Math Olympiad training in high school.

“I always dreamed of studying here,” Ramírez said in Spanish.

His journey began with a flight to Spain, where he stayed for four days before continuing on to Florida. He spent a month in Orlando with his sister before moving to Miami.

There, he lived with his mother’s best friend, sleeping on a couch in the living room while finishing his junior year of high school. Later, he shared rent with a roommate.

After graduating from Killian Senior High School, he found a job and began living independently. Adjusting to life in a new country was far from easy, but his determination carried him through.

“What I struggled with the most, without a doubt, was English,” Ramírez said. “I consider myself a fairly sociable person; when I arrived, I made friends very quickly — even in Orlando during the short time I spent there. I moved down to Miami and made even more friends.”

There were nights he would stay up studying until 4 a.m., just to have to get up a short time later to go to work, he said.

Although he had always dreamed of attending a prestigious university like MIT, Harvard or Stanford, it once felt out of reach. That changed when he discovered Miami Dade College’s Honors College, known for sending its graduates to top universities and for providing full academic scholarships.

“​It was the first achievement I attained here in the United States,” he said of his acceptance to MDC’s Honors College. “It meant a great deal to me … because I could now see an opportunity to get into these major universities, which had previously seemed impossible to me.”

A mentor

The first class that Ramírez took at MDC was with Professor Jyrko Correa-Morris, who would introduce him to the world of research and become his mentor.

Ramírez credits much of his success to Correa-Morris, saying it would not have been possible without him.

“Working with David has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my academic career,” Correa-Morris told the Miami Herald. “From the very beginning, he demonstrated a level of mathematical maturity and intellectual independence that is exceedingly rare at the undergraduate level.”

Correa brought on Ramírez to work on a project that eventually led to the publication of “Structural Redundancy in Subspace Network Coding via Atomic Decompositions.” They worked alongside Cuban MIT student Elvis Cabrera.

Ramírez presented their findings in October 2025 at MIT at the Undergraduate Research Technology Conference, which is an internationally-renowned research conference for undergraduates. It was his first visit to the campus.

But he didn’t stop there. Ramírez’s research has taken him all over the world.

He attended the International Conference on Inventive Computation Technologies in London and the Global Citizenship Alliance Academic Seminar in Salzburg, Austria.

He has also been able to visit Peru on a medical campaign through MDC. He’s set to take part in a study-abroad program next month in Japan for an anthropology class. He got a full scholarship for the program through MDC.

“I am extremely happy and grateful for all of this. I felt that way because, well, one of the things I enjoy most — aside from everything related to the scientific world — is traveling,” Ramírez said.

Ramírez was MDC’s nominee for the 2026 Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship for undergrad students pursuing research careers in STEM.

“Securing a nomination at a large institution — where there are so many students — is quite difficult in itself; competing against candidates from major research universities makes the challenge even greater. Yet, I won that scholarship,” he said.

Ramírez’s goal is to pursue a Ph.D. and to graduate from MIT with a perfect GPA, but he also hopes to get back into sports at MIT and is particularly interested in its soccer club.

“I am confident that his recent acceptance into Massachusetts Institute of Technology is only the beginning of what will be a highly impactful career,” his mentor, Correa-Morris, said. “David is not only an outstanding student — he is a young scholar with the potential to make meaningful contributions to science and society.”