Ozgen Felek Born in a small village in western Turkey, Dr. Ozgen Felek knew from the age of six that she wanted to be an author. Her journey to achieving this dream began in the city of Denizli, Turkey, where she completed her primary and secondary education. When she graduated from high school, wearing a headscarf was not possible in universities, so she decided not to apply for college until the headscarf ban was abolished. Six months after her high school graduation, she married and moved with her husband to Elazig, a small city in eastern Turkey, where he began his medical residency. In 1990, the headscarf ban was abolished at colleges; however, Ozgen was about to give birth to her eldest daughter, so she waited until her daughter turned three years old before she began school. “I thoroughly enjoyed the freedom in the first three years of college,” she recalled. “Yet, following the postmodern coup of 1997, the headscarf was once again banned. I graduated from college with honors, and started my master’s and later Ph.D. in the same school with a wig on top of my headscarf. It was really embarrassing!” At this time, Ozgen was reading the Turkish translation of The Unreadable Shores of Love: Turkish Modernity and Mystic Romance by Victoria Rowe Holbrook. Largely because of this book, she decided to come to Ohio State University, in 2000, so that she could meet and study with Professor Holbrook. “Since I spoke no English, I first started learning the language in ESL courses offered by a local church in Columbus. I had to take the TOEFL exam five times to be able to apply for an M.A. at OSU. And eventually I passed it!” While working on her master’s degree, Ozgen was strongly influenced by Professor Holbrook, so much so that, several years later, in collaboration with Professor Walter Andrews of the University of Washington-Seattle, Ozgen wrote her a festschrift—a collection of writings published in honor of a scholar. Titled Victoria Holbrook’a Armagan (2006), the volume includes essays on Turkish and Ottoman literature. “The festschrift,” Ozgen said, “is to show my deep gratitude to Professor Holbrook for her patience, kindness, and endless support.” After completing her master’s degree at Ohio State in 2003, Ozgen returned with her family to Turkey for one year, when she completed her coursework and took the preliminary exams for her Turkish Ph.D. that she pursued under the guidance of Sabahattin Kucuk, a well- known expert on Ottoman poetry. In the same year, she also applied to the University of Michigan to work with Professor Gottfried Hagen in Near Eastern Studies. “I was highly interested in Ottoman hagiographical narratives,” she explained, “and when I read his works, I wanted to be his student.” Ozgen began her Ph.D. at U-M in 2004. “The first two years were very hard for me,” she remembered. “My daughters were still young (14 and 6). While I was still struggling to improve my English, I was taking courses, teaching as a Graduate Student Assistant, and also working on my Turkish dissertation. It was quite a challenge.” Fortunately, in her third year of the Ph.D. program, the University of Michigan recognized her academic abilities by granting her a prestigious Barbour Scholarship (2006). “The Barbour Scholarship made life much easier for my family and me. I was relieved from teaching responsibilities, and I had all my time to complete my coursework, prepare for my U-M prelims, and write my Turkish dissertation. Without the Barbour Scholarship, I don’t think I would ever have been able to complete my Turkish dissertation and defend it in the summer of 2007.” In her dissertation research at the University of Michigan, Ozgen focused on Ottoman dream culture and Ottoman dream interpretations. “During my research I came across an amazing collection of Sultan Murad III’s 1858 dream letters that he sent to his Sufi master. While reading through these letters, I realized that what I had in hand was a treasure not only for Ottoman, but also for world history and literature. In reading this collection of letters in its historical context, what I saw was how a sultan used his dreams to fashion himself. I decided to focus my dissertation on dream-telling and his letters as a narrative device for self-fashioning. It was an interdisciplinary work which encompassed cultural, religious, and psychological approaches. It dealt with questions of image and identity, historiography and epistolary culture in Islam, dreams in Islamic and Sufi traditions, and Messianic movements in Islamic history.” Ozgen completed her dissertation, Re-creating image and identity: Dreams and visions as a means of Murād III’s self-fashioning, in 2010. Her interest in Islamic dreams led her to the idea of preparing an academic volume on the topic. In 2012, she published a collection of essays, Dreams and Visions in Islamic Societies (SUNY Press) which she co-edited with Professor Alexander Knysh of U-M. The book features essays by several experts, including one by Ozgen herself. “It is a collection on the existing literature on dreams and visions in Islamic societies,” she explained. “The volume focuses specifically on the social, historical, and mystical dimensions of dreams and dream interpretations in Islamic tradition.” In addition to her essay in this book, Ozgen disseminated her research by writing more articles and chapters; however, she realized that she wanted to publish Sultan Murad’s dream letters for a larger audience. As a two-year Mellon Fellow at Stanford University, she prepared a text edition of Sultan Murad’s dream letters and published them in 2014 under the title The Book of Dreams: The Dream Letters of Sultan Murad III Introduction-Analysis-Diplomatic Edition. “This book includes the transliterated text along with an introduction. It historicizes the mystical content and analyzes the philological aspects of these dream accounts.” Meanwhile, Ozgen began translating these letters into English, along with Professor Walter Andrews. They published the first 100 letters digitally under the title, “The Sultan’s Dreams Project,” as part of the Newbook Digital Texts Project, and a book publication is in progress. She recalls, “I have done so much work with Professor Andrews. All these years, he has been a wonderful mentor. Even though we were physically distanced from each other, he has been with me in every step of my journey in American academia.” Currently, she is working on two projects. The first, a monograph on Sultan Murad III, is what she calls “a biography of a bibliophile sultan.” For this book, Ozgen examines his writings, specifically his dream letters, and also his poetry collection. The other project explores the construction of manhood and masculinity in early modern Islamic and Ottoman literature. In this book, Ozgen examines a wide variety of genres to see how different genres perceived and shaped the concept of manhood and masculinity in the Ottoman elite culture. In addition to her research, Ozgen is an accomplished artist of Islamic illumination and miniature painting. In 1989, she took an Islamic illumination and miniature painting course at Firat University taught by Susan Cataloluk, a preeminent miniature artist in Turkey. “When I saw her paintings I fell in love with this art form. I studied under her guidance until she left our city. And later, upon her departure, I was asked to continue to teach it at the same university.” The inspiration for Ozgen’s art largely comes from Islamic literature. “My academic works require a close reading of illustrations and illustrated texts as well as un-illustrated ones. While working on a text, I visualize a scene and then prepare its sketches. Once I am confident that I have drawn the final version of the design in my head, I start in the traditional style with very fine brushes, crushed gold leaves, and gouache paints. I closely examine the early-modern illustrated manuscripts in order to stay loyal to the dress code, architecture, and artistic style of the time as much as possible. For example, I painted a depiction of one of Sultan Murad’s dreams as it was described.” Ozgen taught Islamic illumination and miniature painting classes at the University of Michigan and Stanford University, which she greatly enjoyed. “My art class attracted both undergraduate and graduate students from many different disciplines, including engineering and political science. My students’ artwork was exhibited at Stanford in 2012. I even helped two of my talented students to manage their way to Istanbul to learn this art in more detail under the guidance of Sibel Zirek, who was one of my students at Firat University and is now an accomplished artist.” Art is an integral component of Ozgen’s teaching. In 2002, she taught her first class in the United States: Ottoman Turkish for beginners at Ohio State University. Since then, she has taught a wide range of content-based courses on Islamic history, culture, literature, art, and gender as well as language courses at Ohio State University, the University of Michigan, and Stanford University. Currently, she teaches modern and Ottoman Turkish at Yale University. “My favorite teaching experiences are when I have been able to integrate language, culture, religion, and art into the classroom. I’ve found that in these settings, students move beyond their interest in learning merely for a grade, and get involved in genuine discussions of intercultural life. I am passionate about teaching interdisciplinary classes. Students not only read about culture, but can take this information and picture it in a way that they can represent the experience in art.” Ozgen uses modern performing arts in order to introduce the major literary works of Islamic literature. In 2005, working with Professor Walter Andrews and University of Michigan theatre students, Ozgen prepared an Ottoman poetry night titled “Ottoman Poetry in the Age of Beloveds,” featuring a lecture, theatrical performances, music, and dance. The success of the poetry night furthered her interest in developing another performance project. In 2007, in collaboration with U-M Dance students, she staged a modern dance rendition of Beauty and Love, (Hüsn ü ‛Aşk), one of the most acknowledged masterpieces of Islamic mystical poetry and the last great mystical romance of the Ottoman tradition. One of her paintings depicts a scene from Beauty and Love. In addition to her interdisciplinary teaching, artwork, and research, Ozgen has a strong interest in creative writing. “I learned how to read and write in first grade, and in second grade I started working on a ‘novel’ about a child who was isolated by his friends because he was very poor. Later on, I tried writing other novels in fifth, sixth, and seventh grades. And then I switched to writing short stories and poems. I kept writing and sending my writings to literary journals in Turkey until we moved to the United States in 2000. And of course, in the States, I became so busy with learning English, doing a master’s, a Ph.D., and teaching with two small children that I had no time to continue my stories and poems.” After finishing her doctoral degrees, Ozgen returned to creative writing as a fun and relaxing break from academic writing. “I have been writing film scripts and short stories. I’m also currently working on a trilogy in Turkish. It is a story of a man, Genghis, who teaches at a prestigious college in the United States. He seems to have a happy life with his family. However, despite his charming and scholarly exterior, he has a tormented inner life that begins to manifest itself at his place of work. In the Western world, much scholarly and unscholarly work has been written about Muslim women, but not much has been written by Muslim women. This novel is to show how I, as a Muslim woman, perceive American academic culture and Western men. In this sense, I believe it will be a unique piece of work.” Ozgen has an impressive list of accomplishments, including two doctoral degrees, several books, many artistic productions, and years of teaching. Yet, when she thinks about success, she does not mention any of these achievements. “I believe my real success,” she reflected, “is to have been able to raise two daughters with beautiful hearts despite moving from one state to another while juggling endless papers, deadlines, and exams in our sixteen years in the States. My older daughter Sevde is now a third-year medical student, and Bilge is starting college this coming fall with a pre-med track.” She acknowledges that support along the way was instrumental in her success: “I have been very lucky to have had wonderful advisors. They have been more than mere teachers to me. If I have been able to succeed with two kids, it is also because I had the most supportive mentors.”
Jihyeon Yeom Before coming to Michigan, Jihyeon worked at the Argonne National Lab in Chicago, but she knew she shouldn’t stay put. “It was while working at Argonne that I realized to do more important or precious research, I need to know more about whatever field I’m in.” She applied to six graduate schools and was drawn to U-M because of her faculty advisor, Professor Nicholas Kotov. “He is famous in my field and set me up as Graduate Student Research Assistant. So I packed all my stuff in my tiny car and moved to Michigan from Chicago.” Jihyeon’s research with inorganic nanoparticles in chiral shapes is doing groundbreaking work. She explains, “Chiral shapes, which determine whether you are left or right handed, are all over. In the human body, they are in the sugars of our DNA and RNA, where they present as left handed. The pharmaceutical applications related to chirality are very important.” Many people remember the prevalence of birth defects caused by thalidomide in a morning sickness drug that was developed in the wrong-handed shape. Today, chiral molecular drugs comprise over a third of worldwide drug sales, making the application of chiral synthesis critical for diagnosis and therapy in the pharmaceutical industry. Researchers have been studied by inorganic scientists for decades. Jihyeon says, “There isn’t much inorganic research on chirality, so we are a rising star in our field doing this research.” One of the goals of studying chirality of inorganic nanostructures is to discover the origin of homochirality in natural compounds. She explains, “If you look at a plant winding on a tree or the swirl of a shell, you’ll notice they are right handed. Nature using chirality as very important factor, but we really don’t know why. Circular particles are primary interactions at the cellular level, but there were no experiments to show the effect of geometric nanostructures.” That’s where Jihyeon’s lab came in. “Our study was the first of its kind. We eliminated right/left characteristics to view them separately in water, but when illuminated by exposure right or left light they would reassemble their heliocore structure,” she says. The recipient of many awards, Jihyeon’s work on chiral semiconducting nanoparticles has been very well received and was published last year in Nature Materials, showing that the geometry of nanostructures can be imprinted by circular exposure. The next steps of her research could have significant implications for the nanostructures of the primary space building material, dark matter. “Dark matter has strong magnetic dipole properties that allow us to study the nanostructure and further our original research on chirality.” U-M is a great fit for Jihyeon. “I love it here. The foundation for research is amazing. If I want to analyze a sample with instruments, we have everything I could need. We have so many talented professors to work with. My advisor is well connected, and he can guide me to resources all over campus. That base is very nice.” A fifth year student, Jihyeon will soon start writing her dissertation. With great funding in hand, she has the luxury to advance her research and stay for a sixth year. She has strong support for that strategy: “One thing my advisor does is keep students at least for six years. I think that is good because we need to keep growing our knowledge and building potential before going out to the real world and starting our careers.” Jihyeon wants to be a professor, so as a first step toward that goal, she’ll seek a postdoctoral position after graduation. She’s traveled extensively during the last few years when attending conferences in her field. Fortunately, they have been in exciting places like San Diego and Florence, Italy. Jihyeon spends extra time taking it all in: “It was my first time in Florence, and during the whole flight I read a thick book about art, the history of Florence, and the masters like Leonardo Da Vinci. I was so excited when I landed. It was so fun – the food was great, I saw the ‘Mona Lisa,’ I just loved it.” Jihyeon makes time for fun, trying to strike that challenging work/life balance. She comments, “I love Ann Arbor as a student especially. I’m playing tennis, and even though Ann Arbor has a long winter, U-M has very nice indoor tennis facilities. Summer is great; there are many activities we can do. I’m outdoorsy, and there is good kayaking and hiking, and the tennis outdoors is free. I just took up golf. It is a very healthy life.” A relatively new tennis player, she’s hooked on the sport. “I started playing tennis three years ago, and I was the president of tennis club last year. I organized games for 30 people to play every Friday night. After that, we’d go grab a beer,” she laughs, acknowledging that grad students definitely need to have an outlet or two.
Ziyong Lin Ziyong studies aging, specifically age related changes in human cognition, a field she’s been interested from a young age. “I grew up in China with my grandparents, and living in an Asian community where there is a positive association with aging made me very interested in aging and cognition changes.” When she came to the U.S. for her undergraduate work in 2008, she quickly discovered a different purview on aging from her fellow undergrads here. Her research on aging began then and there. She pursued aging research throughout her undergraduate years and applied to a wide variety of graduate programs in psychology and neuroscience. (She left Mills College with dual degrees in Psychology and Music with an emphasis on musicology and music performance.) She recalls, “Michigan has one of the top psychology programs in the country. When I came to visit, I really liked the program here, there was so much to offer.” Currently a 4th year doctoral candidate, Ziyong has started defining the prospectus for her dissertation. She proposes to examine attention in younger and older adults and the different factors that may influence attention, specifically motivations via monetary incentives that vary depending on context or age groups. More specifically, she examines different components of attention through a modified Continuous Temporal Expectancy Tasks which measure people’s sustaining attention and ability to resist distractions. She explains, “There are different abilities in paying attention in the sense that people may be able to do one well but not the others. I’m trying to determine whether incentives or motivations may impact one type of attention and not the others, if age group differences matter and if they are swayed by one or the other. There are so many factors that may come into play.” She is scientifically interested in attentions and cognitions in general, thinking about incentive structures and motivational tools, to determine the right incentive structure and how to motivate people. This topic mainly focuses on young adults, but Ziyong thinks there is a lot more that can be done on aging and older adults. She states, “For really long run implications, this research may help to understand what are better incentive structures to help people perform better in the long run and what different components of attention come into play and how different motivations may affect them one way or another.” Ziyong works in two labs because she has two advisors, Professors Cindy Lustig and Patricia Reuter-Lorenz. She declares, “I’m lucky that I have such amazing faculty to work with. They are very supportive and are leading researchers in our field. Having the opportunity to be trained in this situation, I feel like I’m extremely fortunate.” The large psychology department is broken down into nine different sub-disciplines, and her field, cognition and conative neuroscience (CCN), is a small one. She loves it, though: “We have our own area, and I really like it. The grad students are amazing; they are very collaborative and supportive here. Her department is one component of U-M that has been a great space for Ziyong: “Graduate school has been a great experience. In addition to the exciting science aspect, I get so much support from the graduate school; it is surprising how much support I get from Rackham. I tell recruits about the support from Rackham and from the department, it’s a really great balance. I’m so impressed with the funding and security and love the chance to teach and interact with undergrads. Rackham has many kinds of grants – Rackham research grants for pre-candidates and candidates, and also every year a conference travel grant – that’s something that makes this program really unique in that it really encourages graduate students to develop and do the research that they want. For this part I’m extremely grateful. That is unique about Michigan.” Hoping for a career in academia, Ziyong wants to continue to do research and engage with undergrads, partially because she really enjoys teaching. She continues, “To do that, I may need a postdoc position to better prepare myself or a research scientist position to get a little more experience. U-M has prepared me well, but to achieve my goals I still need more training. My ultimate goal is going back to China to teach. That’s where home is. This is an exciting time in China – the research is really growing. Psychology is still a new area of research in there and I think it would be very exciting to join the force.” Teaching has been a significant highlight of her graduate school experience, and she’s had many opportunities to grow and reflect on what that means to her personally and professionally. She describes, “I’ve had a really great time teaching at U-M. I believe that always the best way to learn is to teach. When I first came to Michigan my funding included five terms of teaching. As a female international student, more advanced graduate students warned us about negative stereotypes with Asian woman GSIs who are not teaching in their first language. Talking with them was really helpful. I myself learned a lot through this process. I’ve learned about classroom culture, different students, and the completely different ways that you convey materials. In passing knowledge, I hope this has been a good experience for undergrads I’ve taught. Many may not have met International students like me and it has been great to play a different role in the classroom, because I have been a student for a really long time. These are very important steps to see who I am and who I want to be, especially when you come from a different background. You learn what makes you comfortable, them comfortable, and find common ground. I have been able to teach very amazing students the over years, and some became my research assistants.” A 2016/2017 Barbour Scholarship recipient, Ziyong heard about the Barbour Scholar program before setting foot on campus. “It is very prestigious, and I heard about it before I came to study here. I’m extremely honored and fortunate to have received the award. When talking about the 2017 centennial celebration of the Barbour Scholarship, Ziyong says, “I feel very fortunate to be a part of this amazing tradition. I’m very curious about the stories of past scholars. Being part of this program will provide the opportunity to see how other women came along. Even though it is much easier than it used to be for International students, there still are a lot of challenges. I can only imagine what life was like for the early scholars and find it inspiring to see how people decided to come to another continent to pursue their dreams.” Music still plays a big part of Ziyong’s life. She’s played flute with three of the six main orchestras on campus and loves attending events featured at the School of Music, Theatre and Dance or at UMS. She elaborates, “We have this wonderful Hill Auditorium, and UMS offers great student tickets. I’m really happy with the art and music scenes in Ann Arbor.” She is also active in the Chinese student community, participating in a weekly Chinese Culture Salon where students take turns sharing things they’re good at. She’s given several talks in forum and always kicks off the academic year with a talk on recommended musical performances to attend.
Zhibek Kadyrsizova Zhibek had a very mathematical childhood. Born in Kazakhstan to parents who both studied physics in college, she was interested in math from an early age. “It was a big part of our family. We spent some of our free time together solving problems,” she recalls. In her home country, students choose their major before beginning college, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to study mathematics, but thought that with a math background, “I can do basically anything. In Kazakhstan, mathematicians mostly focus on analysis, but I wanted to study algebra. To do so at the graduate level, I needed to go elsewhere.” She says, “The more I travel in the U.S., the more I love Ann Arbor. For a small city, it provides a lot of opportunities, activities and events, and is particularly easy to navigate without a car.” When asked what she does for fun, she responds, “I like working. I have great friends in the math department. There are a lot of international students. We work together, hang out and cook for each other, sharing each other’s cultures. We share such a core common experience as international students, it is easy to bond with them.” Zhibek’s dissertation research focuses on commutative algebra, particularly solving problems related to commutative rings. A commutative ring is an abstract object which resembles the integers and their properties. One of the main goals of commutative algebra is to study rings’ properties and these are closely related to understanding their ideals. Different methods and concepts have been developed and new theories have been born as a result. However, tight closure theory has proved to be one of the most powerful tools in modern commutative algebra, providing proofs for questions that had been open for quite a long time and simplifying the existing ones. She explains, “My research focuses on one particular aspect: the tight closure of ideals and the related theory.” In reflecting on her graduate studies, she says, “I have learned a lot since I started the PhD program at the University of Michigan. Part of my time I have devoted to teaching and the other part to studying. That is what I love about mathematics: you learn and you share what you have learned, and in the end you learn even more. However, teaching is a time consuming and mentally exhausting process. Doing research also requires a lot of mental resources. Especially now, when I have to learn a lot, it is important to dedicate as much time and effort to it as possible. It is the period when I can build the foundation for my future research career. And I want it to be strong.” She continues, “I look at teaching like rivers flowing into and out of a lake. You get knowledge from someone else and pass it to others as well. This is the most productive part of math for me. I learn more when I prepare a lesson plan and help explain concepts to others.” Funding has been an essential part of her graduate journey. “Receiving a Barbour Scholarship is giving me an opportunity to strengthen my research skills and build a solid background in commutative algebra, which I will later use to bring positive changes to the educational system of my home country of Kazakhstan,” she plans. “I’ll be sad to leave here. This is such a great city and University. I’ve been here for four years and they’ve been the most productive of my life. This experience has helped open my mind. I’ve really grown as a person.”
Yilan Zhang “U.S. bridges were designed to serve for 50 years. Most of them were built 50-60 years ago.” Uh oh. Since many of the bridges are passing their useable service time, Yilan’s research on how we can effectively monitor the structural health of bridges is particularly important. “Our department studies a variety of issues around this subject, but my project features long-term instrumentation, using wireless nodes with sensors to collect bridge data and extracting information from collected data using cyber-infrastructure. “We utilize two test bridges – a suspension bridge in California and a highway overpass in Michigan. I have sensors on the suspension bridge to assist the decision making process, determine if the bridge is safe to use after earthquake. Every day I get data from the bridge that I’m using to build a data management system to share with different researchers. We send the information to post data processors to determine the risk of bridge failure as well. This leads to more comprehensive analysis of the data and structure of the bridge.” Ultimately, she’d like sensors to be on every bridge. Describing her field, she says, “Our lab focuses on civil infrastructure system work, using creativity and technology to push forward.” Yilan came to U-M for her junior year as an undergraduate student in the University of Michigan-Shanghai Jiao Tong University Joint Institute. She didn’t waste any time, saying, “I started research early, doing independent study work. I looked up a professor online, contacted him and got involved with his lab.” He later became her faculty mentor as a graduate student. She attributes her smooth student experience to being well funded and starting her project early. “I’ve had a mixture of funding to make it all work,” she says. As a current Barbour Scholar, she receives full support for the entire coming year. “Still, there is a lot of pressure as a new grad student. Everyone comes in as a straight-A student – it is a level playing field. That takes some getting used to. As an undergrad, I lived on Central Campus, played a lot, my coursework was not as heavy and I didn’t have pressure to do research. Grad school is a new routine – going to the office every day, moving close to the lab where I spend most of my time.” What the future holds for her is a reflection of her journey. Yilan explains, “The Joint Institute has been a great experience. I want to replicate it for others.” While joining a Chinese university as a faculty member is her short-term goal, she hopes to establish another China-based joint institute between Chinese and American engineering schools.
Shweta Ramdas Shweta is from India and completed her undergraduate degree in nearby Singapore. “It was close to home and a great school for science. I knew I wanted to go to grad school and study genetics, and I was reading papers from researchers at Michigan. It made sense to come here.” As many students in the Program in Biomedical Sciences (PIBS) do, Shweta touts the rotation program in the first year. “It was great to have the first year to explore without commitments to different programs or labs. It did make it difficult to choose from the great choices.” “Coming here, I was worried about Ann Arbor being a small community, but that was totally unfounded. I like the community here so much: you can really be yourself without being judged. There are people with diverse backgrounds in my lab, and different perspectives to research in the department. It is an amazing learning environment.” Shweta’s research interest is to apply quantitative, integrative approaches to analyze genetic and genomics data, with the goal of improving our understanding of the biological basis of complex traits and common diseases, with a particular emphasis on bipolar disorder. “I knew I wanted to study the genetics of psychiatric diseases. I find them fascinating and want to see how to separate genetic influences from environmental influences. Our genes make us more or less susceptible to how our environment can affect us. Bipolar disorder is an example of a genetic condition that is one of the least understood, but one we know is highly influenced by genetics.” Shweta says the biggest challenge to graduate school is working on something so open-ended, not knowing what the end point is. She also has had to learn to take ownership of her work, explaining, “In graduate school, we’re learning to manage that shift, take away the imbalance and become independent thinkers.” For fun, she participates in a number of U-Move programs on campus, enjoying yoga, capoeira dancing, as well as reading and spending time with her department-mates. She volunteers at the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum in her spare time as well.
Rattima Sirihorachai My experience as a Ph.D. student in Nursing at Rackham represents an exciting chapter in my life. I feel that I am very fortunate to be a part of U-M and have learned so much since I began my graduate studies. Although there were challenges and difficulties as an international student, Rackham has always made this transition easy for me by providing helpful resources and support. I’m really thankful for the Barbour Scholarship award. It is a great honor for me to receive this prestigious award which provides the essential support I need to complete my program and conduct my research. My research training in patient safety is preparing me to make a difference in healthcare in Thailand and other developing countries. I am proud to say “I AM RACKHAM.”
Parinaz Naghizadeh Ardabili A fourth year graduate student, Parinaz hasn’t been home to Iran since she arrived at U-M. “I have a single-entry visa. If I go back, I have to re-apply for a new visa, and I know people who do that, but it is a time-consuming process,” she explains. She has a home away from home here, though. “There was a big adjustment – a new language and environment, but Ann Arbor and U-M are very welcoming of international students. There are good Iranian student associations, and many engineering students are from Iran, so I have a lot of ‘home’ here with me. Actually, my best friend from elementary school is in my cohort, and family is around the corner, sort of. My sister is in graduate school in Montana. “ She explains that studying abroad for grad school is common in Iran, and she was most interested in studying in the U.S. U-M was an easy choice, since it is one of the top electrical engineering schools in the country. She was also influenced by her faculty advisor, competitive funding package, and the fact that she already had a community of friends here. “My faculty advisor is female, and she is such an important role model. It is interesting to see how she does things in a field where there aren’t many women. I feel I learn a lot from her.” She thinks her Iranian undergraduate experience gave her a good foundation for graduate school, as her final project involved doing research with faculty, reading papers, and solving mathematical problems. She says, “Research is so much more than just your field, it involves English, math, computer science, electrical engineering, economics, among so many others. Everything has to be in there to make it happen – it is so much more than I imagined.” “Rackham helps make that easier, with so many dual-degree options. Here it is so easy because you are encouraged to be at the intersection of multiple disciplines. I wanted to work also in microeconomics, and my advisors said ‘of course, go, do it,’” she continues. Parinaz’ primary research interest lies in applying methods in mathematical economics, specifically game theory and mechanism design, to problems in the field of computer and network security. “The problem I’m working on now is cyber insurance, an intersection of economics and computer science that results in shaping behaviors of individuals to make a more secure system. There are a lot of challenges to making it work, and the process is highly theoretical at this point.” Her biggest challenge now is a common theme among graduate students – time management and balancing the need to do research with required coursework. Parinaz comes to central campus for a break from her studies, grabbing a coffee or walking around town. When she has real down time, she enjoys biking around Ann Arbor and exploring new restaurants with friends. She hopes for a faculty position after she completes her doctoral degree, most likely pursuing a postdoctoral fellowship immediately after graduation. Her advice to new students is, “Stand back from the undergraduate mentality where you’re focused on courses, and think more about your research. As soon as you start putting the two of them together, your classes will make more sense as you apply what you are learning. Ann Arbor is beautiful – get out and explore it! Make the time to enjoy it.”
Meera Sampath Meera was drawn to U-M even while completing her master’s degree in Control Systems in India. She was studying the research of Professor Semyon Meerkov, a renowned U-M faculty member, for her masters’ thesis; she found his work and the whole domain of controls fascinating, and she wanted to continue this line of study for her doctoral research. She was highly encouraged by her professor in India who told her that if she wanted to learn control systems, U-M was a great place to go. She flew to America and landed in Chicago for a few months, but it was a bus ride that was the biggest, most important leg of her journey. She recalls, “I took a Greyhound bus to Ann Arbor and knocked on doors. This was all before the internet was so ubiquitous and access to anyone and anything was a touch away; I didn’t have any appointments, I just got on the bus, came over, and met faculty in EECS one beautiful summer afternoon.” It was a good call. Professor Stephane Lafortune, who subsequently became her thesis advisor, not only said that he would love to have her as a student, but also found funding through the newly formed transportation research program to make it possible for her to come to U-M. She says, “I was definitely in the right place at the right time. That was one of the luckiest days of my life.” Her grad school years were, like they are for many, exciting and life changing. As the end of her graduate studies rapidly approached, Meera started exploring options in and outside of academia. Her path was quickly determined one Friday afternoon at the EECS Control seminar, a monthly tradition that continues today: “The seminar was given by two distinguished scientists from Xerox who gave an exciting talk on controls and diagnostics. At end of the talk, I walked up to them and told them that I would like to apply for a research scientist position at Xerox. The next thing I knew I was in their lab and it is twenty years at Xerox for me now! It was another example of right place, right time. Xerox was looking for a person to help establish a diagnostics competency; they were looking for someone with exactly the background I had.” As a graduate student, Meera was selected to be a Barbour Scholar, a prestigious award given to highly deserving female scholars from Asia. After she finished her dissertation, her work was selected to receive the University of Michigan Distinguished Dissertation Award, given annually to only ten newly minted alumni across all schools and departments at U-M. Her dissertation is considered a seminal body of work in her field and continues to be highly ranked in major citation indexes such as Google Scholar. Of these awards, she says, “It is a real honor and privilege and I consider myself fortunate to have received them. I think it is wonderful that U-M has such scholarships as the one Levi Barbour created a century ago. It is a great tradition, and continues to encourage and inspire students.” Since the program’s inception almost 100 years ago, a key tenet of the Barbour Scholarship is that scholars ideally return to their home country with their U-M education and make a lasting impact around the world. It took Meera a decade to go back, but she did. She recalls, “I didn’t go back immediately, and that sense of obligation remained with me. I am very happy that I was able to fulfil that requirement in a very different manner.” She has made a lasting impact in India and for Xerox, by founding a research center there in 2010. She explains, “We proposed the idea to Xerox’s CEO to create a research center in India at a time when all of its labs where in the Western Hemisphere. We thought differently about how we should we set it up, and we created what is now a thriving research center that I had the privilege to run for about four years.” Meera currently serves as Xerox’ Vice President for Innovation and Business Transformation, managing the research project portfolio for business services and focusing on building a strong innovation culture within the services business at Xerox. “I started as an individual researcher, moved to technical project leader, then research program manager, to head of a research center, all within the research division. This current position gives me the opportunity to look at things from a different angle, from the business side. Whereas my earlier jobs were focused on creating and helping create the most innovative ideas, I now focus on how best to turn the great ideas coming from the labs into commercially viable, successful products and offerings.” Meera finds her way back to Ann Arbor regularly. She comes to attend meetings of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Council to which she lends her leadership and expertise. She also comes to see her son, a second year student at the College of Engineering. She asserts of her son’s decision, “We were absolutely thrilled he wanted to attend U-M. We didn’t visit the campus until he got in, but when we did come, it took him no time to say, ‘Oh, I’m coming here!’” Meera’s faculty advisors, Professor Lafortune and Professor Demos Teneketzis, with whom she continues to be in close touch, served as counsel to her son as well, helping him in his decision to choose his major at U-M, which has turned out to be computer science. On visiting campus today, Meera exclaims, “It is much fancier inside and out, there are more buildings, but feels very much the same. The vibrancy is the same. It is great to see so many enthusiastic students from around the world just as before. Every visit makes me so excited.”
Sudha Krishnamurthy As the Program Director of the Office of Postdoctoral and Graduate Affairs at the Gladstone Institutes, Dr. Sudha Krishnamurthy (2010) says that the most rewarding part of her career is working with graduate students and postdocs on their career and professional development. Sudha began her own professional career in 1999, when she entered dental school in India, a five-year program that she completed in 2004. During this time, she became interested in clinical dentistry—specifically early prevention and treatment—and decided to pursue a doctorate in oral cancer research. When she searched for the best schools, it was important for her to find a university with a dedicated cancer institution. The University of Michigan met her criteria and she came to the United States to begin the doctoral program in Oral Health Sciences in 2005. Based in the School of Dentistry, Sudha also collaborated with the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center. Her research on head and neck cancers required clinical sampling of patient tumor samples. By investigating these samples, Sudha discovered where head and neck cancer stem cells exist and how targeting these cells using an antibody (tocilizumab) helped to decrease the cancer stem cell population and prevent the recurrence of cancers. The antibody she studied is currently part of clinical trials for cancer therapeutics. In 2010, Sudha’s research was recognized by a prestigious Barbour Scholarship, which was important for her both professionally and personally. “I’m a big proponent of women in science,” she said. “The acknowledgement of winning a prestigious award helped me to move onto a good postdoctoral position. On a personal level, it was important for me to be a part of a tradition. I felt honored and humbled at the same time.” After completing her Ph.D. in Oral Health Sciences in December 2011, Sudha worked as a postdoctoral researcher for two years at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston—one of the top clinical cancer centers in the country. At MD Anderson, she was awarded the Odyssey Fellowship, which sponsors outstanding postdoctoral fellows to pursue innovative cancer research at MD Anderson Cancer Center for a period of three years. This competitive award is given annually to only 6-8 researchers—and Sudha was one of them. “The Barbour Scholarship was recognized on my fellowship proposal,” she said. During her Odyssey Fellowship, Sudha worked in the Department of Head and Neck Surgery, specifically focusing on stem cells and cancers in genomics. “During this period I was very involved with the MD Anderson Postdoctoral Association and the National Postdoctoral Association,” she recalled. Her experiences working with postdocs led her to her current position. Sudha currently works as the Program Director in the Office of Postdoctoral and Graduate Affairs at the Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco—an independent and nonprofit biomedical research organization focused on understanding, preventing, treating, and curing cardiovascular, viral, and neurological conditions such as heart failure, HIV/AIDS, and Alzheimer’s disease. In this position, Sudha serves graduate students and postdoctoral researchers in many ways. As a career educator, she contributes professional and career development resources, assists with mentoring, and provides individual career advising. She also developed a 8-month career exploration program for their (Gladstone) postdocs and graduate students. On an institutional level, Sudha assists with recruiting postdocs, building a strong and interactive postdoc community, and helping to implement policies and guidelines. “I love working with people on a daily basis and helping them achieve what they want to do,” she said. “I love the interaction—I work with different sorts of people: faculty, administrators, postdocs, and grad students. It’s never boring, never monotonous. You never know how your day is going to be.” On a national level, Sudha serves as the public face for interactions between the Gladstone Institutes, industry, and universities. “It’s a very collaborative kind of role,” she said. In addition to her work at the Gladstone Institutes, Sudha is a very active member in the national scene for postdoctoral advocacy—through her various roles in the National postdoctoral Association and assisting with post PhD careers, program design and development, and mentoring. When reflecting on her career, Sudha remarked, “It’s important to be open to new things, opportunities, and experiences. Follow your intuition and interests. We have more skills to contribute than we often realize. The Barbour Scholars are a global population—the program makes a big difference to a lot of women.”
Cheri Chan Born in Hong Kong, Cheri Chan (2007) attended British boarding school and then began her journey as an international student at Cornell University in 2000, where she majored in Biological Sciences with a minor in Cognitive Science. Initially, she considered pursuing a career in cancer research; however, as she progressed in her degree program, Cheri realized that she was becoming increasingly passionate about another topic: how culture and language work together to shape the way we view the world and how we interact with others. “I realized that my international educational experiences had planted a seed of curiosity about culture and the diverse yet equally beautiful ways of seeing and living,” she said. In particular, she wanted to learn more about how cultural differences emerge in early life. In order to pursue this area of research, Cheri began the Ph.D. program in Developmental Psychology at the University of Michigan in 2004. She was awarded a Barbour Scholarship in 2007 which, she said, gave her recognition, affirmation, and funding at a critical juncture of her doctoral education. “The Barbour Scholarship enabled me to make two discoveries. First, the interview process made me realize my deep passion for my dissertation direction after presenting and sharing it with people in other fields. Second, I felt humbled to know that the Barbour Scholarship Committee saw value in my ideas and contributions as a scholar, to the extent that they were willing to support a full year of my graduate training.” Over the years, she became increasingly appreciative of how the scholarship positioned her among a global community of scholars, leaders, and trailblazers who are dedicated to making a difference in their fields. Cheri’s dissertation, The Role of Prior Belief in Children’s Trust in Testimony: A Social Ecological Approach, sought to understand how children learn about the world by comparing preschoolers and second graders who grew up in the U.S. to their peers in Hong Kong. This comparative study was guided by a central question: When encountering information—presented by teachers—that contradicted what children already knew, would they choose to trust the teachers, or would they stand firm in their beliefs? In exploring this question, Cheri wanted to understand how much children in both countries relied on their existing knowledge, how much they deferred to authority figures, and how much of a role culture played in mediating these relationships. She was surprised by her results. “I expected children in Hong Kong to obey authority and children in America to stand for their own beliefs. But research revealed a more nuanced reality. Children in the U.S. were more receptive to unexpected knowledge imparted by a teacher, but children in Hong Kong showed more resistance to knowledge that went against their beliefs. In ambiguous situations, children from both cultures were more likely to defer to the teachers.” Cheri attributes these findings to the more egalitarian nature of relationships and the more normative posture of embracing diverse perspectives in America, as well as differences in the culture of education in Asian countries. “In Hong Kong, learning is more often about being correct and avoiding mistakes, and traces of this tendency emerge early on, even in preschool.” After completing her dissertation, Cheri published her research in an articleand presented her findings at several academic conferences. While her dissertation research considered the influence of culture from theoretical and empirical perspectives, today—in her current position as the Assistant Director of International Student Success, Global Programs, at Concordia University Irvine—Cheri says that she is “living and breathing the complexity of culture day in and day out among a truly global community.” Cheri’s passion for her current work emerged from her own identity as an international student, and from her doctoral research, which enabled her to focus deeply on the nuances of culture. In collaboration with the Global Programs team, she is committed to empowering students’ growth through intercultural learning experiences, which take several forms: on campus in classrooms, service learning, and study abroad programs. “My role has three dimensions,” she explained. “First, I come alongside students from all over the world at a specific season of their journeys. Second, I develop close partnerships with campus departments and engage faculty and staff in understanding the unique needs and strengths of international students. Third, I work to nurture an inclusive campus culture, by fostering strategic collaborations while also demonstrating what inclusion can look like through the way I interact with people on and off campus.” In her role in enabling international student success, Cheri confronts both challenges and opportunities. “Daily, I am challenged to find ways to interpret behavior, to look beyond the surface to discover strengths and beauty. Not only does the idea of success carry different nuances in different cultures, the definition of success is dynamic, shifting in meaning through seasons of life. Right now I’m excited about opportunities to foster healthy synergy between international students and American students who returned from studying and service abroad—who now understand what it means to be an international student—and to engage students, staff, and faculty in becoming part of a global community.” When reflecting on her own journey, Cheri shared some advice for current and future Barbour Scholars: “There is no way of knowing completely what lies ahead. I think that with every season and environment in which you find yourself, it is important to keep a posture of being thoughtful about what you are experiencing, intentional about how you want to grow, and thankful for everyone who crosses your path. After I finished my degree, the world began revealing itself to me. The dots—no matter how disparate they may seem—will eventually connect themselves.”
Zhen Zeng-Liao Since January of 2016, Zhen Zeng-Liao (1994) has held what she calls her “dream job” as Executive Director of Community Center Shanghai—a position that draws on the wide range of skills she developed while earning her Master’s degree in Materials Science and Engineering (1995), as a Barbour Scholar, from the University of Michigan. “The analytical thinking, problem solving skills, and ability to work with many different people provided a foundation for me,” she said. Zhen’s early educational foundation, laid years before she entered the University of Michigan, began when she was growing up in China. In 1957, two overseas Chinese, Chen-Ning Yang and Tsung-Dao Lee, earned the Nobel Prize in Physics—an inspiration for Chinese youth, especially since the Chinese educational system strongly emphasized science and engineering. As Zhen recalled, “My dad said those fields are something you should study because they will give you solid skills so you will always have a job.” Although at the end of the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese government brought back college education, there was little choice for students, who faced an additional challenge in having to declare their majors before beginning university studies. “I was sixteen,” Zhen said, “too young and too narrowly educated to know my other options.” Zhen followed her father’s advice: she studied Materials Science and Engineering and completed her undergraduate degree in 1990. At this time, China had opened up a lot and Zhen, like a lot of Chinese university graduates, wanted to study abroad. Yet Zhen did not have the financial luxury to support international study. She decided to apply for graduate schools in Materials Science and Engineering—a field that she thought would have a high chance of garnering scholarships. She succeeded, gaining admission to the University of Michigan. In reflecting on her educational experiences in the U.S. and in China, Zhen observed that the two countries’ educational philosophies are very different. “The big difference between university study in China and the U.S. is that U-M offered more hands-on, independent project working experience. At U-M, I worked in a lab and conducted experiments. Those were good lessons for me to learn.” Zhen excelled in her studies, and her department nominated her for a Barbour Scholarship, which she received in 1994. This prestigious award, originally endowed in 1917, provides funding for Asian women to complete their graduate studies at the University of Michigan. “The Barbour Scholarship was a huge honor,” Zhen said, “because you had to be nominated by your department, and there were many international students who were pursuing their studies at U-M. I felt so much joy and felt much more confident about myself, which helped my later career development.” After completing her graduate degree, Zhen worked at GE Plastics in product development. As her career progressed, her interest and personality inspired her to work in other, non-technical areas. She was selected as the first wave of trainees for Six Sigma process improvement, a set of techniques and tools for process improvement used in many sectors to improve organizational quality. After two years of completing rigorous trainings, overseeing projects, and mentoring other employees, Zhen earned her Six Sigma “black belt,” which she used to advance many areas in the company: supply chain management, marketing, program management, and consulting. In her next position, at Dow Chemical, she worked in marketing. “Because I worked on so many projects I understand many aspects of a company,” Zhen said. While working in the U.S., Zhen volunteered as president of the Overseas Chinese Association. The association’s many branches throughout the United States connect Chinese people living in America and also help Americans to better understand Chinese culture. In her role as president, Zhen coordinated volunteers, spoke with the media, organized events such as live performances on the Chinese New Year, and volunteered in a Chinese language school for children. “I did it because I loved it,” Zhen said fondly, remembering how she had taught Chinese to two American siblings whose parents were her co-workers. In 2005, Zhen returned to China and worked at Dow Corning in Shanghai for three years. During this time, she volunteered for an organization called Stepping Stones China that serves the children of migrant workers in Shanghai. In this rapidly modernizing city, there are vast numbers of migrants who come to work in construction and in the service sector. However, according to the Chinese system, their children are not considered Shanghai residents and therefore cannot attend the city’s public schools. “Their children have no place to go to school, and are living in very poor conditions, without much money, and they don’t have qualified teachers,” she said. In order to help solve this problem, Zhen served as a volunteer coordinator for a migrant school, helping to recruit volunteers to teach English. “I recruited 20+ volunteers on a regular basis,” she said. As a springboard from there, she recruited a group of international high school students to teach English at a local community center to the children of migrant students. In 2009, Zhen decided to take time off from the corporate world to care for her small children. During this period, she focused on her passions: teaching Bible study, going on mission trips, and volunteering. “I stayed home for six years but I never really regretted focusing on my family,” she said. “I don’t want young women to be discouraged if they have to take time away from their career and focus on their family. I want to encourage young professional women to plan their priorities and know when to shift between family and work. Your family is number one priority but that doesn’t mean you have to give up your career.” When Zhen’s family moved to Singapore for two years for her husband’s job, she wanted to continue volunteering, but this time she wanted to draw on her passions for art and history. She found the perfect fit at the National Museum of Singapore, where she volunteered for two years, completing a rigorous six-month training to become a qualified docent, and then serving as a co-chair to train new docents. “I learned so much from those trainings, a lot of self-knowledge enrichment, which helped me to understand my passions and how I wanted to take my training and work experience. I also drew on my passion to bridge the gap between Eastern and Western culture. I always felt that I had that bridging ability.” Zhen now exercises her ability to bridge Eastern and Western culture in her current position as the Executive Director of Community Center Shanghai. Founded in 1998, this organization has four centers throughout the city and aims to connect, support, and enable individuals and families to thrive in Shanghai. “At the time we started there was a lot of need for people to learn Chinese language, culture, and history—and we do have that in our classes—but we’re also evolving into an international community. We have a lot of people teaching English, Spanish, French, and German. We are really an open platform for people to come to us, to learn, to take what they are looking for. We’re also a gathering place for people to meet friends. We have a lot of events that bring people together.” Zhen’s plan is to ensure that Community Center Shanghai serves the needs of the international community. Her 3-5 year plan is to create an international cultural hub; to focus on health awareness, food safety, and wellbeing; and to create more children’s programs. “This is the kind of job that I dreamed of,” she said. “I want to encourage all the young ladies who are still studying. You don’t have to know exactly what you want to do, but focus on what you can do and let your heart and passion guide you. It’s never too late.”
Ming-Cheng Lo Ming-Cheng Lo (1993), Professor of Sociology at the University of California-Davis, is passionate about supporting underrepresented groups and ensuring that the voices of these groups are included in broad academic conversations—a complex balance that she always considers when conducting her research. Professor Lo, who grew up in Taiwan, pursued her undergraduate education at National Taiwan University, earning a B.A. in English in 1987. After completing her bachelor’s degree, she decided to seek graduate training in Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan, where she attained her master’s degree in 1989. “During my second year of the program,” she recalled, “I took a course in the sociology of gender and I really fell in love with sociological thinking. After talking to a few professors and doing some thinking, I decided that sociology was what I wanted to do for my Ph.D. training.” Professor Lo studied for her doctorate in Sociology at the University of Michigan, where she earned a Barbour Scholarship in 1993—an accolade that played multiple roles in her life. “The first is the most straightforward: the Barbour Scholarship provided financial support. As a foreign student, I was limited in what kind of scholarships I was eligible for, and my student visa did not allow me to work off campus. Second, the Barbour Scholarship provided a vote of confidence. As a young, foreign Asian woman, I was in an unfamiliar environment, trying to navigate an entirely different culture and educational system. Third, while I was thrilled that there was a category designed for me, there was also a part of me that wanted to get validation from a more general source. I began to realize that there is a need for support and encouragement that is specifically designed for underrepresented, under-supported groups, and also a desire for people from these groups to contribute to the general conversation – and be recognized for their contribution. The Barbour Scholarship started my thinking on the topic of how and why I, as a scholar, need to work both on supporting underrepresented groups and getting the voices of these scholars represented in broader academic discourses.” Professor Lo’s dissertation research focused on an under-studied group—Taiwanese doctors under Japanese rule—and made their experiences part of the larger conversation on the topic of healthcare. She turned her dissertation research into a book, Doctors within Borders: Profession, Ethnicity, and Modernity in Colonial Taiwan, which was published by the University of California Press in 2002. “My book applies Western theories to look at a non-Western case: healthcare development in Taiwan during colonial period. I asked questions that were not asked at the time. Specifically, I addressed the tension that medicine was imported by the state as a political tool at the same time that it was saving lives.” In her current research, Professor Lo is most interested in how cultural and structural inequalities are mutually constitutive, focusing on health care and civil society. She recently co-edited The Handbook of Cultural Sociology (with John R. Hall and Laura Grindstaff; Routledge 2010). Designed for graduate students and young scholars with a theoretical interest in culture, the handbook contains 65 chapters that address various topics on the cultures in and of transnational lifeworlds. In addition to this work, Professor Lo has conducted research on immigrant health for nearly a decade. Her project, “Immigrant Patients and Culturally Competent Healthcare,” is funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the American Sociological Association. “Healthcare is an issue that everyone in this country knows is important. After I wrote my book about Taiwanese doctors, I wanted to explore something new – something that is not about Taiwan. I looked at immigrants from Vietnam and Mexico with limited English proficiency and their encounters in navigating healthcare systems.” Because Professor Lo speaks neither Vietnamese nor Spanish, she hired graduate students as translators, and later collaborated with graduate student research assistants to code the data after the interviews were conducted and transcribed. While examining these in-depth interviews, Professor Lo uncovered new insights. “Policy makers and practitioners have made assumptions about what kind of cultural barriers immigrants might encounter. I learned that some of those assumptions are wrong. For example, sometimes the biggest cultural barriers immigrant patients encounter are not about their own gender assumptions or understandings about medicine. These can become cultural barriers, but sometimes the bigger cultural barriers come from the practices we take for granted in our health care system. For example, we only answer the questions the doctor asks even though we have other concerns; you lose your appointment and are frowned upon if you are 30 minute late even if you have to take 3 buses to get to the clinic, etc. We assume we have to talk and act in a certain way in the hospital, which can show up as major cultural barriers for my immigrant interviewees.” In addition, Professor Lo’s research discovered more about the experiences of co-ethnic healthcare professionals. “We often assume that co-ethnic healthcare professionals are the ones we want as cultural brokers between, for example, a white doctor and a non-English-speaking immigrant patient from Mexico. However, co-ethnic healthcare professionals encounter a lot of pressure and barriers in their workplace including a lack of sufficient resources and a clinical environment that is not supportive of diverse cultural norms. They can’t do the work all by themselves, and they internalize a lot of the costs.” Professor’s Lo’s research on healthcare has produced several academic articles. Moreover, through her affiliation with the Center for Poverty Research, she wrote several policy briefs based on her healthcare research findings. “I was trained in a very theoretical way at Michigan, and as I get older and move through my career and through society I find it increasingly important to have theory help me better understand empirical questions. The Center for Poverty Research has been a nice forum for that and also to disseminate my research.” While she actively continues her research, Professor Lo also regularly teaches undergraduate courses on immigration, medical sociology, and social movements. Her work with graduate students includes teaching courses—a seminar on medical sociology and a theory seminar—and advising graduate students who research in the areas of health, culture, or civil society. In thinking about advice for Barbour Scholars, Professor Lo recalled an interaction with her advisor. “I remember a few years ago my former advisor at Michigan emailed me and asked me if I could get in touch with one of his students who was applying for the Barbour Scholarship. She was smart and capable, humble, and maybe not very confident. I felt like the most useful thing I could say was, I know that you might feel unsure of yourself, as someone who is underrepresented, yet believe in yourself and know that there is something that you can contribute to the greater good based on your unique perspective and different background. Your difference can be an asset for you.”
Veena Sahajwalla Veena Sahajwalla vividly remembers her interview for the Barbour Scholarship program. She remembers sitting in the interview room, feeling nervous, and being asked what impact she wanted to have on the world – what her vision was for her own legacy. Her response? “To use engineering to improve the quality of people’s lives, to take any lessons back to India, and to have a global impact.” She was soon selected for the scholarship and eventually earned her Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering. She is now an Australian Research Council (ARC) Laureate Professor and Director of both the Centre for Sustainable Materials Research and Technology (SMaRT) and the ARC Research Hub for green manufacturing at UNSW, Sydney. Professor Sahajwalla remembers her time at the University of Michigan fondly, reflecting on the friendships she built on campus. She describes the experience of coming to U-M after completing her undergraduate degree in India and Master’s in Canada as “fascinating,” and was excited to have the opportunity to learn from amazing professors and peers. The support of professors was crucial for her development, as was practice presenting her work in conferences and meetings, which felt intimidating, but taught important lessons. Professor Sahajwalla recalls, “at the time, you feel like ‘this is really scary, I’m doing presentations in front of experts who know so much more than I do,’ but you need to have those experiences and develop the confidence to stand up and present your ideas as a graduate student.” She also emphasizes that her friendships are what she cherishes most about her time at Michigan; after sharing the ups and downs of graduate school together, many of those she met in Ann Arbor are friends for life. Reflecting on her career, Professor Sahajwalla emphasizes how amazing it is to see what impact education can have, and cites her experience at U-M as an inspiration for her current work. Since graduating, Professor Sahajwalla has invented an environmentally friendly technology for recycling rubber tires in steel-making, preventing more than 2.5 million tires to date from ending up in landfills and helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Following the commercialization of this breakthrough technology in Australia and internationally, she has expanded her innovative approach to transforming waste into green resources, materials and products. Her team of some 30 researchers at the SMaRT Centre are pioneering new methods to safely recycle and transform e-waste into value added materials, to tackle some of the most technically challenging waste streams like mixed plastics and the contaminated non-metallic shreds left behind after a scrapped car has been stripped of its metal. She has spoken about her inventions throughout the world, and her research has been internationally recognized through many awards. In 2016 Professor Sahajwalla was announced as one of Australia’s Most Innovative Engineers by Engineers Australia. In 2015 Professor Sahajwalla was the Innovation Winner of the Australian Financial Review–Westpac 100 Women of Influence awards, and was listed as one of Australia’s Top 100 Most Influential Engineers by Engineers Australia. In 2012 she was named Overall Winner of the Australian Innovation Challenge, and was presented with a Banksia Award and the GE Eco Innovation Award for Individual Excellence. While already well-known and highly respected within her own sphere, Professor Sahajwalla became one of Australia’s best-known scientists and inventors through her regular appearances as a judge on the long-running ABC TV series The New Inventors. However, she is most proud of her initiative “Science 50:50,” a campaign to promote, support, mentor, and inspire Australian girls and young women interested in careers in science. She had considered the idea for three years before being awarded the Australian Research Council (ARC) Georgina Sweet Laureate Fellowship, which, in addition to her major research into a new, safe method of recycling e-waste, sponsor her work to improve opportunities for girls and young women in science and technology. She was motivated by the road blocks that discourage young girls from pursuing studies and careers in the STEM industry and wanted to provide them with a chance to see what the real world impact of knowledge is in practice. Science 50:50 creates the opportunity for young girls to actually go into various factories, plants, and businesses, among other site visits, to hear stories from real people and talk to inspiring people across science and technology fields. The program works to open up doors, connect the girls to mentors, and empower these high school students to make their own informed decisions regarding their career paths. She emphasizes that “if you’re actually seeing these things in high school, you can make up your own mind about what to study, which is why it’s important to create a bridge from high school into the real world where things are happening.” Professor Sahajwalla received the award in mid-2014 and by early 2015, Science 50:50 was effectively launched and running. Since its official launch, she estimates that roughly 500 students have participated in events ranging from visits to museums, research groups, and companies like Ernst and Young, to online mentoring to their flagship event on International Women’s Day. Professor Sahajwalla dreams that one day the program will expand internationally, and at its current pace, the goal cannot be far from fruition. Considering her vision for her legacy many years after the initial Barbour interview, it is clear Professor Sahajwalla has never lost sight of the mission she presented to her interviewers, continuing to seek and create innovative solutions that serve not only advanced, but also developing economies. To current graduate students and all future innovators, she provides the following advice: “We all have dreams and visions for our futures when we’re young people studying, and… of course [graduate school] can be a challenging time in our lives where you’re figuring out what you want to do. My advice is to always do what you’re really passionate about, be true to yourself to nurture your internal happiness, which you can share across the world. If you’re passionate about what you’re studying, you can [use that passion] to improve the quality of lives for everyone across the planet, in whatever way that might be.”
