Article by Eun Ji Chung, Ph.D.

I met Christine McCary during graduate school. Although our research circles had never overlapped, we both applied to and were accepted to the Management for Scientists and Engineers summer program held by the Graduate School and Kellogg School of Business at Northwestern University. In sum, this certificate program aimed to “equip promising doctoral students with the necessary business and leadership skills,” in order to address the gap between the challenges faced when managing and leading teams associated with the commercialization of research and the extremely focused doctoral experience. Attendants of the program can be generalized as open-minded, acutely interested in the application of science, well-versed, and on a personal note, up for a challenge. Christine epitomizes these traits.

Christine McCary, Ph.D., received a Bachelor of Science in Cellular/Molecular Biology from the University of Maryland. During college, she was pre-med and was determined to be a part of science through medicine. While preparing to take the MCATs, Christine had an epiphany. She knew she would love the academic and intellectual experience of medical school, but the unforgiving working hours of a physician would not grant the time she wanted to devote to her family and friends. She decided then that her value system and priorities would be the ultimate arbitrator of her career choices. After this time of introspection, Christine decided that she would need to choose a career in which her curiosity for learning, her passion to mentor and teach, and her desire for work-life balance would be satisfied.

Christine attended Northwestern for graduate school where she looked forward to “taking the academic challenge and overdosing on science.” Her thesis aimed to investigate the effect of Vitamin E on the migration of leukocytes within the lung. Christine enjoyed exploring unchartered territory through novel research, but she also started to investigate post-doctorate options beyond the traditional academic track; while she loved benchwork and teaching, these parts of the job were often minimized by the grants-driven reality of the profession. After graduate school, Christine did a postdoc at the University of Chicago’s Office of Biosafety before joining the Career Advancement team as an Assistant Director for Graduate Services (https://careeradvancement.uchicago.edu/). Specifically in her current position, Christine works with students and postdocs from the Biological and Physical Sciences Divisions, helping them make informative choices on their career paths through various seminars, CV/application review, and one-on-one sessions. The focus is equally split for the academic track and the nonacademic track. The mission she says is to “help you do what you want to do.”

Article by Eun Ji Chung, Ph.D.

In March, we introduced Dr. Chinonye (Chi-Chi) Nnakwe who is the Director of Graduate Diversity Recruitment at the University of Chicago (https://www.awis-chicago.org/community/march-2012-scientist-of-the-month-chinonye-chi-chi-nnakwe). We wanted to follow-up with her and this newly-created position that aims to increase the population of traditionally underrepresented groups in the graduate population.

After we do quick introductions, Chi-Chi is on the white board and gets right to the point. She explains that name recognition of the University of Chicago among academic circles of underrepresented minorities needs to be improved. Often times, only students that have undergraduate faculty mentors and advisors are presented with the U of C as a top choice and are provided the encouragement to apply. In addition, while careers such as doctors and lawyers are prevalent enough where there is a general understanding of their roles and contributions to society, explaining what someone does with a Ph.D. degree is not as obvious. Therefore, Chi-Chi’s main objectives are to make the Ph.D. degree tangible to students as early as high school and to increase name recognition, recruitment, and retention.

Chi-Chi lists out 5 initiatives that she has been implemented to achieve these goals:

1. UC Weekend (March): This event was started in 2012 and includes the entire campus with activities such as Scientific Diversity Symposium, alumni/career panels, and faculty presentations in order to welcome prospective minority students. Mark your calendars:  This year’s event is April 4-6, 2013.
2. School Visits (year round): Chi-Chi’s travel schedule includes college and high school visits as well as conferences to attract students to the U of C. Chi-Chi also follows-up with students that want to experience it for themselves through the campus visitation program, continuing the conversation and relationship started through her initial visit. In addition to campus tours, prospective students are introduced to graduate students from their relative departments.
3. Student Advisory Board: This is a new initiative that includes a board of current students who will partner with Chi-Chi to speak to issues of recruitment and retention.
4. Pipeline Programs:  Chi-Chi collaborates with the directors of pipeline programs to provide students with a more intimate experience than campus visitations through internships that may serve as a pipeline to attract prospective students to UChicago.  Social media avenues such as Facebook and Linkedin have been implemented to continue to foster these relationships.
5. Evaluations: Chi-Chi takes part in evaluating various past programs, like UC Weekend, to gain strategic insight for grants development and future recruitment initiatives.

While Chi-Chi’s research experience as a graduate student and her time as a consultant provided great technical and managerial experience, Chi-Chi recognizes her interaction with students and the ability to mentor in her role as the Director of Graduate Recruitment Diversity to be incredibly rewarding. She also recognizes the great enthusiasm and the support from faculty, administrators and students from all parts of campus.

Article by Agnella Izzo Matic

“It’s naïve to think science could be a neutral topic.”  That is the headline promoting ETOPiA’s most recent theater production, “The How and The Why,” which examines conflicting theories about female evolutionary biology from the perspectives of a female professor and a female graduate student.  Dr. Matthew Grayson founded ETOPiA (Engineering Transdiciplinary Outreach Project in the Arts) at Northwestern University in 2008 and has produced, and sometimes starred in, the autumn productions.  For Grayson, the ETOPiA plays serve to start a conversation about the purpose and relevance of science in our lives.  Previous plays have delved into the life of Marie Curie, human cloning, and the atomic bomb during WW II.

When he is not on stage, Dr. Matthew Grayson can be found in his role as Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Northwestern University.  After receiving his PhD from

Princeton University, he followed with a post-doctoral fellowship at the Technical University of Munich.  Dr. Grayson has been awarded a CAREER fellowship from the NSF and is also a Humboldt fellow.

Currently, his research group studies the electronic properties of materials and engineers them to have a novel function.  One major area that they focus on is thermoelectrics, where waste heat can be converted into electricity or, alternatively, electricity can generate a temperature differential (refrigerate or heat).  For instance, rub your hands together.  Grayson plans to turn that small amount of heat generated in your hands into a kilovolt (that’s 1,000 Volts) of electricity using his thermoelectrical materials.  Among other things, this might be useful to generate low-intensity X-rays, which need very large voltages to accelerate the electrons but don’t require a lot of current.

To see this research in action is to better understand it.  The semiconductor-based electronics being tested are so fine that they need to be viewed under a microscope for the proper connections to be soldered.  For testing, these electronics are placed in a super-cooled magnet, which has been mounted in the floor of one lab and extends downward into Grayson’s second laboratory one floor below.  From the top, the magnet appears like a Medusa of wires, hoses, and connections protruding in all directions.

It is not often that you encounter individuals who combine such unique interests: theater and electrical engineering.  Dr. Grayson credits his involvement in theater with a positive influence on his teaching, both in the classroom and in seminars.  He has received two teaching awards while at Northwestern University and warm reception for his conference lectures.  Students are at ease talking with him during office hours and he keeps an encouraging eye out for talented young minds.

To him, one of the most important roles he fills as a mentor is making sure that people, especially female students, are aware of opportunities that they might have otherwise missed.  For instance, Grayson and his lab members invite middle and high school girls from the Chicago area into their lab every spring as part of the Society of Women Engineer’s Career Day for Girls.  His first two PhD students were women and he has mentored 3 other female undergraduate students in the last 2 years.  In addition, he perceives the ETOPiA plays as an unconventional experience that can ignite an interest in science for a younger generation that comes from multiple perspectives, ethnicities, and genders.

As with most other academic researchers, Dr. Grayson sees challenges ahead in publishing the next manuscript, getting the next grant, and graduating the next student.  However, he views these as part of the reason he chose this profession, because he enjoys taking on those challenges.   Grayson says, “In the end, you have to know your field and you have to know yourself.  When you think something is interesting, you have to be confident enough that, when no one else even understands why you’re doing that, you “That’s ok, I’m sure it will become clear eventually”.”

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Dr. Grayson was nominated for the 2012 AWIS-Chicago Motivator Award by Ms. Sunanda Prabhu-Gaunkar, a PhD candidate in Grayson’s laboratory.

Article by Marina Pazin

For the past year, I have been fortunate enough to be working as a regulatory writer at Randstad Pharma. Regulatory writers support the progress of drug development to the market by drafting appropriate, highly-technical documents to be submitted to drug-regulating agencies, such as the FDA, and to the countries in which the clinical trials in humans and/or marketing approval is sought.  I enjoy my job and enjoy daily interaction with my colleagues. On a daily basis, I am surrounded by warm and very intelligent females with whom I frequently talk about not just work-specific issues, but of issues affecting women in the workforce. Dr. Angela Kwiatek, PhD is one of my colleagues who is not only great at what she does but is very optimistic. I recently took some time to learn more about how she reached this chapter in her professional life.

Angela has long been interested in science. “As a child, I was always asking “Why?”. My mother encouraged my curiosity by taking me to the library whenever she didn’t have the answer. Therefore, it was an easy decision to pick one of the majors that tackle the world’s mysteries.” As such, between 1997 and 2001, Angela went through a rigorous undergraduate training leading to a degree in biochemistry from Bradley University in Peoria, IL. Fueled by motivation and a strong desire to better herself, Angela’s quest for education did not stop with her B.S. degree. Instead, she immediately enrolled in the Department of Pharmacology of University of Illinois as a graduate student.   Angela explained her thesis project in a net shell: “Thrombin is a pro-inflammatory mediator that increases vascular permeability in endothelial cells by activating store-operated calcium entry (SOCE). SOCE is activated by thrombin stimulation of cell surface protease-activated receptor-1, which causes a rapid and transient increase in intracellular calcium due to the release of calcium stored in the endoplasmic reticulum. Subsequently, calcium enters through a plasma membrane cation channel called transient receptor potential channel 1 (TRPC1). TRPC1 is localized within cholesterol-rich invaginations of the cell membrane known as caveolae that are coated with a 22 kDa protein, caveolin-1 (Cav-1). The Cav-1 scaffolding domain binds many signaling molecules and regulates their function. My studies showed that Cav-1 regulates SOCE and the resulting changes in endothelial permeability by binding TRPC1’s C-terminus with its scaffolding domain.”  Ultimately, her hard work paid off as she received doctoral recognition in 2006. Already a co-author of several peer-author papers and conference abstracts, Angela still persisted on, completing two rounds of post-doctoral training at Northwestern University, studying proteins involved in pathogenesis of angiogenesis in cancer in the lab of Dr. Olga Volpert   and cardiac hypertrophy/heart failure under the guidance of Drs. Rishi Arora and Gary Aistrup.  All throughout, she enjoyed progressing in her career as a scientist while having the freedom to choose and to direct the research projects with which she was involved.

While in school, Angela discovered another passion: writing. “All through school, I always got A’s in English with minimal effort. Writing comes naturally to me. I was shocked to discover how little good writing is regarded in research. After my second post-doctoral position, I decided I wanted to switch career paths and go into Medical Writing, a career that combines my love of writing with my love of science.” Angela enrolled in additional coursework at the University of Philadelphia, receiving certificates in Regulatory Writing and Marketing Writing to reach her ultimate career goal.  Now, as a regulatory writer at Randstad Pharma, Angela does what she loves to do. “I enjoy writing documents for drugs that are about to be approved and marketed to the public. It’s exciting to know that the documents you are writing will help bring a drug that many people need to the market.”

Always an optimist, Angela offered a simple explanation when asked about why she continued to push herself so much: “Learning never ends.”