Q: Can you provide a brief overview of your career and the type of work you have done?

A: I was trained as a chemist, culminating in a PhD at Oxford. I might have stayed in England for the rest of my career, but for the lure of a post-doc position in the U.S. (which came about serendipitously because of a sabbatical leave at Oxford by Prof. Keith Gubbins at Cornell). I eventually joined the faculty at Cornell in chemical engineering and that defined my future career path, including the privilege of being department director at Cornell (2 terms) and the inaugural head at Hopkins (1 term). I have changed the direction of my research twice in my career, which is one of the bonuses of being on the faculty and having that freedom. I moved from studying the physical chemistry of gases to semiconductor materials out of necessity (that was the funding source for my post-doc when I went back in England) and I moved into AI and machine learning ten years ago out of necessity (the problems I wanted to do could not be done without changing the approach I used. The problems were simply too big to consider any other way). When I say ‘necessity,’ the first was out of my hands, the second was tactical and fully in my control. I have also made smaller tactical changes in my career, e.g., riding the wave of organic electronics, and focusing more on algorithm development within AI rather than just being a user of algorithms developed by others.

The type of work I’ve done in my career always kept the thread of studying electronic materials, but this has evolved from traditional semiconductors (like silicon and its alloys, and III/V materials like GaAs) to organic electronics (like pentacene) to solution-processed (energy-efficient to make) solar cell materials (like the metal halide perovskites). I’ve also looked at a wide variety of orthogonal projects that just piqued my attention, like one related to life on Titan (creating our concept of the azotosome that, I’m told, got us on Reddit for a brief millisecond of “fame”), or selectively removing Li from briny water reservoirs, to understanding the action of antimicrobial oligomers (not yet published).

Q: What inspired you to pursue the field of chemical engineering?

A: This really came about because the man who hired me for my first post-doc position was a chemical engineering professor at Cornell. Reflecting on this with the hindsight of decades, this transition from chemist to chemical engineer suited me. I like the focus on solving practical problems that engineers tend to focus on.

Q: What has been your favorite or the most meaningful project you’ve worked on or position you’ve served in?

 My favorite research project is one that doesn’t stand out in terms of professional recognition. I was fascinated about understanding the nature of amorphous silicon (a-Si). Most people lump together the tag “amorphous” and “glass” to denote their lack of long-range order despite having short-range order. But a-Si demonstrates a first-order (i.e., very sharp) phase transition to its crystalline phase, which is unique among semiconductors. I made some progress on this but I was tackling this phenomenon too early given the speed and availability of computing power we had then. I’d love to have another crack at this problem—and maybe I will. That’s the beauty of being an academic; you can work on projects if you have the time and the right student.

Q: How has diversity in STEM been a part of your career?

A: Diversity in STEM has been a part of my career for many decades, and it started before I was even hired as a faculty member (I was a post-doc at the time). Improving the representation of women and, increasingly, that of a broader set of groups who are underrepresented in STEM has been a constant thread in my career. At Cornell, I started a group called WISE (women in science and engineering) for women faculty to promote activities that were important to us (e.g., getting more women on the faculty, improving the numbers of women UGs and graduate students in engineering, etc.). I was on Cornell’s committee of senior women who reported to the Provost. I was one of a three-person committee led by a vice Dean who vetted faculty candidates to ensure that equity and inclusion practices were followed. I have continued this commitment at Hopkins, including a new opportunity to lead the diversity team for the major initiative in data science and AI, as well as being an active member of other initiatives in which I mentor faculty from under-represented groups at other universities, as well as programs dedicated to diversifying the graduate student population, and giving opportunities to learn coding to local Baltimore high school women. This is a lifelong passion for me.

Q: What are some key lessons you’ve learned from your work in promoting diversity and inclusion in engineering?

A: First and foremost, you have to be in it for the long haul. There are no quick fixes. There are plenty of setbacks. There aren’t always too many incentives to promote diversity over other aspects of your job, like research output, promotions and career development, etc. Expect progress to be slow; change moves slowly but you have to keep ‘fighting the good fight.’ You have to be involved because you consider promoting diversity to be part of your ‘moral compass.’ And not because of the rewards; there aren’t many of those. You do it because it’s the right thing to do.

Q: What advice would you give to young scientists (particularly those interested in chemical engineering)?

A: The overriding advice for a young person, regardless of what they want to do, is to follow their passion. Do what brings you joy and fulfillment. That might be as the thoroughbred racing correspondent for the BBC (one of my former career aspirations), or a painter or an engineer. But if you don’t get up in the morning and look forward to your work, then you need to change careers.

My second piece of advice is to accept opportunities when they come along, even if you think you don’t know how to do that role. Someone else thinks you can do it, so give it a try. Be bold.

My last advice is to give back. We all succeed because of other people supporting us, so you owe it to the community, however you define your community, to help others. Relatedly, you will need good mentors throughout your life. Look for them. And hopefully a mentor is looking for you.