Annie Ragusa: Science is for Everyone!

Pathway: How did you wind up as an engineer?

For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved to learn about and explain the world around me. I’ve always been fascinated with why things are the way they are and how things function together. I was the kind of kid that would space out all the time, deep in thought about one random thing or another. For example: “Why does a skateboard turn when you shift your weight?” or “How do the gears on my bike work?” My mom recently gave me this photo of myself at 3 years old in the middle of one of my moments of thought. On the back she wrote “There she goes thinking again…” It wasn’t until middle school that I realized that science, at its most fundamental, is really just the framework we use for learning about the physical world and the subject of all my daydreams. After that, I took all the science and math classes that were available in high school and I loved them.

I enjoyed learning about cell biology, human physiology, chemistry, and physics and had amazing teachers along the way. When it was time to apply to college, I knew that I wanted to be a scientist, but I still didn’t really know what kind. So I looked through all the class catalogues that I had, and I picked the major that required all of the different types of science and math courses available: Chemical Engineering. I planned to change my major to my favorite science after my first two years, but found  I really enjoyed engineering courses and how I could combine all the things I’d learned over the years to solve real problems for real people.

Inspiration: Who inspired (or inspires) you, and why?

The African American Female mathematicians and engineers in the book (and movie) Hidden Figures are a huge inspiration to me.  Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, and Christine Darden are the main characters of the book, but their stories are representative of a broader group of exceptionally talented women who, despite social and political challenges, contributed their skills to some of NASA’s greatest successes. When I think of all they were able to accomplish in the face of such adversity, I am motivated to work even harder and to try to be a role model to young women who are considering careers in STEM.

Experience: Describe a unique or interesting or pivotal experience you’ve had in your career?

When I was an intern at Clorox, my assignment was to design a manufacturing process for a brand new chemical that the chemists at Clorox had just invented. This chemical is a new form of solid bleach that is much more stable than traditional bleach solids and is therefore much safer for people to use.  I never thought that so much interesting chemistry and chemical engineering was happening at a cleaning company, let alone that it would be my job to solve such a big problem. At first it seemed like a daunting task, but within a few weeks I realized that having a problem that no one has tried to solve yet was actually the best thing ever.  I had never felt so much like what I was doing was going to have a positive impact on people’s lives.

Discovery: Describe an interesting discovery, or something you learned/are learning, in your work as a (teacher, scientist, partner role)

I’ve learned that sometimes even though I’m a Chemical Engineer, I also have to be social scientist. Working at Clorox, we spend a great deal of time trying to understand the needs and behaviors of our consumers, but our consumers are a large and diverse group of people. One discovery I made was in a focus group for a new wipes product.  I gave the participants a prototype that was blue on one side and white on the other, and everyone loved how well  the ”scrubby side” cleaned their surfaces. At the end of the discussion, I asked each participant to point to the “scrubby side” and half of them chose the white side and half of them chose the blue side. It was funny to learn that even though each consumer valued a different product attribute, they all agreed that the new wipe was a hit!

 

Future: Describe a goal you have, and why it’s important to you.

My current goal is to become a better cook! I always use cooking soup as an analogy for Chemical Engineering when I try to explain my job to students. I talk about how it’s easy to cook soup for 5 people, but then ask the students to imagine how they might go about cooking soup efficiently for 5,000 people. I recently realized that despite all my knowledge of chemical processes, I have never mastered the chemical process of cooking food. I’m currently reading The Food Lab by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt. The author studied chemistry at MIT before becoming a chef and uses scientific concepts to explain the cooking techniques that create amazing food. I believe that it’s important to talk about science in the context of our everyday lives so we stop perpetuating the idea that only certain people can become scientists. The truth is, everyone already practices science without even thinking about it!