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Megan McBee "I am going to graduate school next year in Toxicology and plan to use my degrees in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. I plan to become a VP of a successful biotech firm in the future. I hope to use my knowledge to improve the drug discovery and development processes. My advise to young women interested in science and engineering is to keep your interests and dreams alive. They can and will come true if you make them. Science and engineering are very rewarding fields to be in and they allow your minds to continue to grow even after you leave school. They keep you thinking." |
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Sanghamitra Sen "As to my future goals, I'm interested in Bioengineering. More specifically, I'd like to use computers and computational methods to model various biological processes. It's a complex problem because there are so many factors involved, but computers have the number-crunching power to give us a better picture of what exactly is going on. The end result, I assume, is that one could use these models to figure out the effects of specific changes to a biological system, e.g., drugs, diseases, injuries, etc. My advice to science-minded youths is this: always expect the best of yourself. Don't be satisfied with mediocre performance, and invest all your effort into the things that interest you (be it math, science, art, or literature). If you promise yourself that you'll do your best, you'll continue to do so when you're older, which is when others will be expecting only the best from you [Side note: I don't mean that you should be a perfectionist; "the best" and "your best" may not be the same, so do what you can]. To females, I'd add that under no circumstances should you give up on specific goals. Don't let people tell you that you're not good enough to learn something, especially based on your gender. At first, you'll have to prove your worth, but show those in charge that you're serious about what you want. And finally, if you don't know what you want, dabble in lots of things; when you do figure out what you like, explore its richness with fervor. A favorite 6th grade teacher of mine shared with me the following quote: "Discover what it is that you love, then pursue it with intensity."" |
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Diana Cheng "My goals in science: PhD in atmospheric science and career in weather forecasting. Advice to young girls: work hard, do what you love, don't be afraid if there aren't lots of women in your field (atmospheric science doesn't have many women studying it)" |
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Terri Yu "Although I am interested in both fields of study, I'm a physicist at heart. I find math too abstract and disconnected from life while engineering is overly constrained and practical. Physics is the perfect balance for me because I enjoy trying to understand nature and challenging it to yield its secrets. Not surprisingly, I plan on going to graduate school in physics and becoming a professor at a research university. For aspiring physicists, there are usually a few routes: working in the high-tech industry, working at a national lab funded by the government, or becoming a professor. I'd like to be a professor because I'm passionate about learning and want to teach and mentor students. Physics is a difficult field to pursue. I once talked to a physics professor who said he never pushed his children to do physics because he thought it was a calling that has to come to people naturally. I agree. You have to be absolutely passionate about physics to do it because there are only so many jobs where people will let you do fundamental research that probably won't pay off for decades. Another thing is that doing physics requires a lot of education. Most jobs require a doctorate which requires 5-7 years of study after college. But I don't want to be so negative. Physics is a wonderful field. I find that the people I work with are incredibly intelligent, not just in physics but in literature and other intellectual pursuits. More importantly, they're all passionate about their work. It's not like working in the corporate world where people are just eager to finish and get out at the end of the day. And you get to do amazing and sometimes wildly original work! Some people spend all their time trying to discover new laws of physics by thinking of particles as strings. There's an experiment in Antartica where people throw a string of photomultiplier tubes down into the ice and use it to detect neutrinos. Not that physics isn't practical. When the laser was invented by physicists, people didn't think it would be useful at all. The World Wide Web was created by particle physicists to exchange data. So, physics is a wonderful field to pursue if you're passionate and determined. If you're interested in pursuing physics, I would get involved in doing science research or science fairs/contests. There are a number of summer programs where high school students get to participate in university-level research. You don't have to do activites that are directly related to physics since it's such a broad field. Any science/engineering activities you do will help you acquire useful skills for a career as a physicist, for example, learning how to build electronics or write C programs. If you're applying to college, try to get into a top physics school like MIT, Caltech, UC Berkeley, Stanford, Harvard, or Princeton. It's certainly not necessary but it helps when applying to graduate school. Above all, if you find yourself passionate about physics (or for that matter anything else), don't let anything stop you: parents, grades, etc. Dogged determination will get you anywhere." |