by J. K. Wenderott

The first thing I notice about Dr. Esther Ngumbi when she joins our Zoom room for her interview are her earrings: vibrant sunflowers. “I bought them on Etsy,” she says smiling. Dr. Ngumbi, an assistant professor of Entomology and African American Studies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), radiates joy and excitement as we discuss her career path and passions that stem from her experiences growing up in a rural farming community along the Kenyan Coast. Describing her journey that has led her to study and research insects, ecology, food (in)security, and sustainability, Ngumbi says, “The more I learned, the more I wanted to learn. It was this treadmill that kept me going.”

Ngumbi attended Kenyatta University in Nairobi, Kenya, for her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees of Science. She then completed her PhD in Entomology from Auburn University, becoming the first woman from her hometown to obtain a PhD degree. Describing herself as a young girl growing up in Kenya, Ngumbi says, “I could not imagine a career in science, because I did not know what science was all about.” She had role models that were teachers, doctors, and accountants, and so she originally thought she would be an accountant when she grew up. The results of her secondary school exams, though, pointed her in a different direction: “Science chose me.” Once she started to do experiments in the lab, she was hooked. “I became very, very curious… I wanted to spend more time in the lab, and I was enjoying every moment.” Ngumbi recalls some early practicals with insects in the laboratory, as well as the proximity of the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology to her University, that laid the foundation for her interests and future research in entomology. 

At UIUC, Ngumbi’s research focuses on the challenges agriculture faces to bring food to the table, brought about by stressors like climate change and insect outbreaks. How are plants defending themselves? How are plants recruiting the help they need? How can we manipulate crops to ensure they are defending themselves? These are key questions that Ngumbi is investigating. Her motivation to pursue these studies comes, in part, from formative experiences as a young girl watching farmers in her community struggle with insects and persistent drought destroying crops. These forces that led to food insecurity in her community and across the globe are ones that Ngumbi is also seeking to understand more. As an assistant professor with appointments in both Entomology and African American Studies, Ngumbi straddles the social and natural sciences. In African American Studies, she teaches classes related to food (in)security. Ngumbi feels her work in both departments influences each other, and she notes the important work of connecting her research in the lab to the impact it has on people, especially people of color in the US and across the globe.

Ngumbi stresses the critical importance of mentoring throughout her life: “I am a product of mentors who held my hand when I did not know anything about entomology and science.” These mentors range from her teachers that believed in her scientific abilities to her research supervisors that helped her see how experimental results tell a story to her current colleagues and department chair that are helping her navigate the tenure process. Having seen the impact of mentoring on her life, Ngumbi is passionate about giving back. She serves as a mentor for her graduate students and through entities like the Clinton Global University Initiative and President Barack Obama’s Young Leadership Program: “As women [in science], we are few in numbers and we cannot afford to have anyone that wants to be in science walk away because they lacked a mentor.” Ngumbi is also dedicated to being a role model that she did not have for young girls in her community and inspiring more young girls to see themselves as scientists.

When asked what advice Ngumbi would give to her younger self, she says, “Do not edit any of your aspirations and dreams… Be you and do not silence yourself.” As we wind down our interview, I cannot help but again notice the vibrant sunflower earrings as Dr. Ngumbi shares a final piece of wisdom: “Allow yourself to bloom where you are planted.” If you’d like to learn more about Ngumbi and her work, please visit https://www.estherngumbi.com/ or https://sib.illinois.edu/profile/enn.

By Evan Phillips

Meet Dr. Toyya Pujol, an Operations Researcher at the RAND Corporation, a self-described health data scientist, and an ardent supporter of the mission of AWIS. This summer, she served in the AWIS-Chicago area chapter’s Mentoring Circles program as a mentor for early-career level women. The two of us sat down to talk recently about her career path, and in the process, she wowed me with her sage career advice and animated spirit.

Dr. Pujol describes her career as a series of “things I fell into”, but one connective thread through it all has been “using numbers to tell a story”. As a high school student, she always loved math and physics. In fact, it was her AP Physics class that truly excited her about the world, because it used math to tell a story. She realized that while math came naturally to her, this wasn’t the case for everyone. She went on to work as a tutor for several years and completed a bachelor’s degree in Management Science with a focus in Operations Research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Following her time at MIT, Dr. Pujol’s interest in mathematical modeling and statistics took her to the Department of Defense (DoD) where she worked as a cost estimator for several years while also completing a master’s degree in Operations Research at Northeastern University. As an Operations Research Analyst at the DoD, she was responsible for in-depth analysis and forecasting of costs for the Air Force. Speaking about her time there, Dr. Pujol described the work as mapping programmatic information (e.g. schedules, technical requirements, logistics, etc.) to a cost distribution. In meeting rooms, she was often the only woman and person of color, as well as the youngest. However, she never felt uncomfortable in these situations. By contrast, there were incidents and a culture in academia that would come to frustrate her.

With some work experience under her belt, Dr. Pujol decided she was ready for something new and had developed an interest in healthcare. She wanted to work with “really cool” real-world data that “you can touch because it represents a person or thing” and so she embarked on her PhD in Industrial Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology (GA Tech). Starting out, she thought she wanted to work on a project to optimize radiation therapy for cancer treatment but realized this type of research wasn’t the right fit. She was still looking for that interesting story to tell with numbers. In a new lab with funding from a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Bioinformatics Training grant, she moved her focus from optimization to statistics. The new project centered around applying health analytics and machine learning to improve maternal and infant health. In the area of health data and statistics, there were real-world problems where her research could potentially impact decisions in health policy. She was awarded multiple fellowships during this time, and she credits the support from her peers and mentorship from her doctoral committee. She always felt grateful for the many female professors/advisors who set examples of how to thrive in academia.

Her Ph.D. advisor at GA Tech advocated for her and encouraged her in many ways. In fact, Dr. Pujol came to her after an incident during which a senior author on a paper repeatedly interrupted her in a meeting. This person redirected questions about the statistical aspects of Dr. Pujol’s work to a different author who was not actually involved with the statistics. Her advisor helped her see that this was something that should be reported. While this incident specifically stood out, Dr. Pujol described to me other comments and challenges in academia that “expended emotional energy”, such as people challenging your right to be “in the room” based on race or sex. She mentioned that one of the things that we don’t talk about with intersectionality is the additional stress that comes with not knowing why someone is disrespectful. You can spend hours ruminating over questions such as, “Is it your race, your sex, or does this person just not like you?”.

Toward the end of her Ph.D., she became a visiting scholar at Harvard after being connected to a biostatistics lab through one of her contacts from her undergraduate days. Her advisor at Harvard not only helped Dr. Pujol expand her research into causal inference but also helped her navigate her job search. Most importantly, Dr. Pujol credits her advisor at Harvard for setting an example of how to be successful in your career without working all the time! Indeed, Dr. Pujol loves playing volleyball, salsa dancing, and watching horror movies. She emphasized to me how she heard a lot of talk about work-life balance but there is “a complacency in academia to make changes around it”.

Right after completing her Ph.D., Dr. Pujol became an Assistant Professor of Industrial Engineering at Purdue University. Here, she was ready to embark on new data science research pertaining to healthcare. Working on multiple collaborative projects on topics such as opioid trafficking networks and telehealth, she realized she “was a policy researcher who uses engineering methods versus an engineer who does policy work.” She told me she felt “disconnected from the impact of her work” and wanted to see her work be used to help guide better health policy. Hence, several months after starting, her advisor supported her in moving toward something new. This summer, Dr. Pujol started working as an Operations Researcher at RAND Corporation, a nonprofit research organization that focuses on public policy and decision-making. In her own words, RAND is all about “choose your own adventure”, and unlike academia where you have many responsibilities set by your position (research, teaching, and service), now she has more freedom to focus on growing as a researcher while also having the option to teach courses of her design. Perhaps, most importantly though, Dr. Pujol feels much more tightly connected with policymakers, and she can focus her work on developing methods as well as making an impact. In fact, in her second week at RAND, Dr. Pujol was working again on estimating the number of opioids on the illicit market. In two weeks’ time, she gained access to DEA data, did the modeling, and could go to a policymaker with results. This is the type of work she always enjoyed and could now do in this new position. Dr. Pujol is also invested in doing thoughtful research related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and health disparities. She explained that this research area must move beyond making simplistic comparisons of two groups, showing a difference, and saying the story is over. “Race is not a cause for the discrepancy in diabetes prevalence. It’s your access to healthy food, the stress from systemic racism, socioeconomic status issues… We need to start thinking about the causal mechanisms in these outcomes… I want to put together simulations to show how we can do this analysis more thoughtfully and bring that to the community.”

Wrapping up our conversation, I was curious what her advice is for students considering graduate school: “A lot of people do it [graduate school], because they don’t know what to do! Unless you are 100% certain with NO exceptions, you want to be a Professor, I strongly suggest working before graduate school.” She stressed some key considerations for those thinking about graduate work: first, you may realize you want to do something different after starting your degree, which can influence what you study in your advanced degree; second, if you can see yourself doing anything other than a Ph.D., go do that first; third, once you’re in a graduate program, think about what “launchpad” you want to set up before graduating—like network connections and transferrable skills. Dr. Pujol’s own career trajectory involved trial and error to figure out what career would be most meaningful for her. Her advice: “Constantly update your priorities.”

By Evan Phillips

This month we are featuring Dr. Shivani Garg, a Senior Scientist at the local biotechnology company LanzaTech (www.lanzatech.com). Dr. Garg is a biochemist by training and a tenacious leader passionate about carbon recycling and sustainability. I had the opportunity to speak with her last month and learn about her interests.

It was during her final years of high school that Dr. Garg became enamored with biochemistry:
“I found it very interesting how we can go from very simple molecules to complicated molecules with these biochemical reactions. There was a direct analogy for me going from organic chemistry which was all catalyst-based to going to biochemistry that was biocatalyst-based. The entire world of biocatalysis, science, and enzymological reactions intrigued me a lot, and I ended up doing a PhD in biochemistry. That is how I found my passion for biochemistry. It is akin to solving a puzzle, going from molecule A to molecule X through a series of biochemical reactions.”

Having completed a Bachelor of Engineering at UIET, Panjab University, it was her blossoming interest in biochemistry that brought her to Iowa State University where she worked with Dr. Basil Nikolau. Dr. Nikolau’s management style, mentorship, and also his scientific endeavors were inspirational to her. In fact, with his support, Dr. Garg had the amazing opportunity to start her own company, OmegaChea Biorenewables LLC. The company grew out of her PhD research and time in the Iowa State Entrepreneurship Program at Center for Biorenewable Chemicals (CBiRC). Speaking of Dr. Garg as a student building a company while still doing a PhD, Dr. Nikolau said, “These start-up activities broaden her experience, make her more interesting as a scientist, and increase her motivation to succeed in research.” (https://cen.acs.org/articles/91/i43/Students-Start-Ups-Biorenewability.html?h=-1014651617). Creating bio-based lubricants from sugars was the first scientific goal of the company. After the completion of her PhD, Dr. Garg’s company extended its research to engineer E. coli that produce specialized fatty acids that could be used for this same purpose. “I worked on it for a few years. Like most start-ups, OmegaChea did not survive for long, but left me with a huge learning experience. One of the biggest learnings was that a technology may be really cool, and you may be passionate about it, but it won’t sell unless it solves a real problem or addresses a pain point of your customers. Scalability and economic viability are also critical to the success of a start-up.”

Asked about the frustrations of scientific research, Dr. Garg reinforced many students’ feelings about it: “There are more failures than successes. Sometimes we just have to walk away and return with a fresh perspective or apply a different approach.” This inevitability has never deterred her. She credits her parents for instilling a strong work ethic in her and supporting her interests. “Having gone through these experiences [graduate school and start-up company], I feel confident about tackling any problems in my professional and personal life.”

Dr. Garg expanded on her biochemistry experience next at Rice University where she engineered methane utilizing bacteria to make fuels and chemicals Here she also learned about Illinois-based LanzaTech, which has pioneered recycling of waste carbon into ethanol. This was a clear match—an innovative technology to help solve a global problem. Speaking about climate change, Dr. Garg did not mince words: “It hurts me that we now use this phrase—climate change—which used to be referred to as global warming. There was this whole politicization of the issue. We have taken more than our share from this planet than we have given back. I want to help in whatever ways I can to give back to the planet” Indeed, Dr. Garg struck me as someone who also walks the walk to promote environmental change and reduce her own carbon footprint. Specifically, she has made a conscious effort not to bring plastic into her home and to slowly take away the items that do contain plastic by finding more sustainable materials.

Since 2018, Dr. Garg has worked on engineering Clostridium bacteria at LanzaTech. Instead of relying on sugars, the novel approach is to rely on waste gases. “We’re tapping into the catalytic potential of the bacteria and the idea is to use waste gases that contain carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and hydrogen. This gas mix is fed to LanzaTech’s proprietary bacteria to make fuels such as ethanol. My role is to engineer these bacteria to make a diverse range of products. These products derived via carbon recycling can replace petroleum-derived chemicals. That has a direct impact on this problem of climate change. If we can capture those emissions and reuse, recycle them we are creating a dent in the fossil carbon economy.” As remarkable as this sounded, I wondered how scalable this technology could be: “We have two commercial plants operating today in China, using industrial emissions to make ethanol and we have six other plants in various stages of design and construction globally, all using different feedstocks from steel mill process emissions to gasified agricultural resides.”  

Asked for any secrets to her career success, Dr. Garg stressed three key elements: working hard, perseverance, and patience. What is most compelling about Dr. Garg’s career though is her passion and the recognition of it: “Follow your heart.”