Where are the Latinos and Native Americans in science?

On paper, they hardly exist statistically. But anyone walking or driving through downtown San Jose this week will see about 3,600 Hispanic and American Indian lab rats, nerds and geeks crossing the streets from hotels to convene at the McEnery Convention Center.

The Society for the Advancement of Hispanics/Chicanos and Native Americans in Science, or SACNAS, was born almost four decades ago to break down barriers and increase their numbers in the so-called STEM fields — science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Aside from brainy speeches, research presentations, workshops and mentoring, a highlight of the four-day conference figures to be the closing powwow. Imagine biologists and physicists stepping to some of the oldest spiritual dances in the world.

“As you can see, we’ll have a lot going on,” said Judit Camacho, SACNAS executive director.

A mathematician and daughter of Mexican immigrants, Camacho lives in Santa Cruz. She will wear a traditional Native American shawl for the powwow’s grand entry.

“It’s an activity that makes us unique,” Camacho said.

SACNAS isn’t the only group trying to increase the number of minorities in science. The Society of Hispanic Engineers has been at it for years. So have several black and Asian associations.

But SACNAS is unique for its twin-billing of Chicanos and American Indians, whose political movements in the 1970s often played out in the same territory and with similar goals: a rebirth of cultural identity and pride in their Indian roots, political equality and social justice.

“The founders certainly recognized a kinship and shared histories between Chicanos and native peoples,” Camacho said.

The original idea for SACNAS popped up when a handful of Mexican-American and Native-American scientists found themselves in the same elevator at a general conference in 1972 in Albuquerque, N.M. One of them joked that their scientific brain trusts would be wiped out if the elevator crashed and suggested a mutual association to increase their numbers.

The jokester exaggerated, but not by much. In 1975, about 15,500 doctoral degrees in science and engineering were awarded to white Americans. Hispanics received only 151 and Native Americans a minuscule 13. Three years later, in 1978, the elevator riders attracted 225 to their inaugural conference in the basement of a Holiday Inn in Albuquerque.

The group grew slowly over the next decade, ran out of money once, but gained steam in the 1990s under the leadership of John Alderete, a microbiologist who emphasized tapping into the vast well of federal funding for scientific research and community outreach. The organization today has two offices, in Santa Cruz and Washington, D.C., and revenues of $4.2 million in 2010, about half in federal grants.

One of the group’s board members, biologist Kristine Garza, said SACNAS became her second “home.” She was a graduate student at the University of Virginia in the 1990s, feeling isolated in the all-white department and awkward in her old neighborhood in El Paso, Texas, where white and science were synonymous.

“I was too brown in Virginia and too white when I went back home,” she said. “SACNAS was the place I began to call home because I could be both.” She now teaches biology at the University of Texas-El Paso.

The conference is open to students and scientists of any race or ethnicity, but the group’s everyday work remains concentrated on Latinos and Native Americans.

SACNAS and other groups say the results of their recruiting are encouraging but still fall far short of making the face of science look like the country. Only 7 percent of all undergraduate degrees in science and engineering awarded in 2008 to U.S. citizens or permanent residents went to Latinos, and only 0.6 percent went to Native Americans.

The problem, Camacho said, is the sorry state of science education in American public schools, especially those in poorer Latino and Native-American areas. Study after study has charted the failure to keep up in science and math education with Japan, Germany and other industrialized nations.

A Bay Area study, reported in Tuesday’s Mercury News, revealed that science instruction has been pushed down the priority list as California schools scramble to meet reading and math goals.

“That’s our biggest challenge,” Camacho said. The group is giving 400 San Jose high school students, most of them minorities, free admission to the conference.

More than 300 exhibitors, from graduate schools to government agencies, will have booths and recruiters at the conference, which is open to the public but requires a registration fee. However, admission to the exhibit hall will be free 9 a.m. to noon Saturday. The closing powwow Saturday night also is open and free.

Featured speakers include John Bennett Herrington, the first American-Indian astronaut, and Richard Tapia, a mathematician and SACNAS founder. President Barack Obama recently awarded Tapia a National Medal of Science, the nation’s highest honor for scientists and mathematicians.

Contact Joe Rodriguez at 408-920-5767 or jrodriguez@mercurynews.com.