Andrea Delgado wins 2026 Wiesner Student Art Award
The Wiesner Student Art Awards are presented annually in recognition of outstanding contributions to the arts at MIT.
Andrea N. Marcano Delgado, a PhD candidate in the laboratory of John and Dorothy Wilson Professor of Biochemistry Catherine Drennan, has been named a recipient of the 2026 Laya and Jerome B. Wiesner Student Art Award by the Council for the Arts at MIT. Presented annually, the Wiesner Student Art Awards honor individual students or groups for outstanding arts-related contributions to the MIT community.
Originally from San Lorenzo, Puerto Rico, Delgado is a vocalist, composer, songwriter, and arranger whose work bridges jazz and Latin American musical traditions. She is the lead vocalist for the Emerson Harris Jazz Advanced Music Performance ensemble—MIT’s highest-level jazz ensemble—directed by MacArthur Fellow and Grammy Award–winning saxophonist Professor Miguel Zenón. Delgado has performed at numerous prestigious venues, including the Berklee Performance Center, and has collaborated extensively with musicians across both the MIT and Boston music communities.
Delgado credits her upbringing in a family of gifted musicians with shaping her artistic voice. Driven by a determination to bring Caribbean music to MIT, she co-founded the MIT Afro-Latin Ensemble alongside fellow Chemistry graduate student Axel Vera. Serving as lead vocalist and arranger, she has successfully integrated a repertoire reflecting her cultural heritage into the campus arts scene.
“Music has been my greatest teacher of discipline, giving me the patience to repeat, refine, and trust slow progress,” said Delgado. “That mindset carries into my work as a chemist, where discovery often comes from persistence and attention to detail. In return, chemistry deepens my structured way of thinking, which I bring back into how I create and experience music.”
As a member of the Drennan Lab, Delgado studies metalloenzymes involved in the biological conversion of $CO_2$ into acetyl-CoA. Her research utilizes cryo-electron microscopy and structural biology to uncover how these complex enzyme systems function at the molecular level, work that carries broader implications for understanding carbon fixation and addressing climate-related challenges.
