Can you believe it has been a year.
I can't. It makes me emotional. I can't believe we've been doing this for a year.
Don't try to make me cry.
Our baby is one year old.
Dope Labs is one year old, and it feels just right, you know, on this anniversary in Black History Month, it feels right for us to really highlight some of our favorites y'all. Yes, some of our favorites in Stem.
Yes, all the black folks in Stem that are all over the world. We wanted to hear all about the work that you do.
So if you listen to the end of the last episode.
Or if you follow us on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook, you.
Would have heard a call where we said, hey, if you're black and you're in Stem, we want to hear from you. We said to record yourself kind of explaining what you do, what your field is, where you affiliated, what you like to do in your spare time. We wanted to hear all about.
It, and y'all responded a lot.
Yes. Now before we even get started, I want to tell y'all will thirty minutes. So we had to cut some clips.
I'm sorry. We could not put everybody if we did, we would need hours and hours and hours of space.
But we have a couple of your fellow Dope Labs listeners who are black in stem that we really want to highlight and I can't wait. I'm Tt and I'm.
Zakijah and from Spotify Studios. This is Dope Labs.
So first we're going to give you a few little tidbits about Black History Months. Yeah.
So Black History Month is celebrated here in the US, in the UK, Canada, and Ireland.
Wow, Ireland, right, I.
Was thinking the same thing. And it started with Black History Week back in nineteen twenty six. Cartigie Woodson wanted to celebrate Black history and so he designated the second week in February as Negro History Week, Okay, And so he chose the second week because it was the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglas. And so then Black History Month, So we're expanding out from Negro History Week
to Black History Month. That was in nineteen sixty nine, and it was first celebrated at Kent State in Ohio in nineteen seventy. Yes, and then when you fast forward six years, Black History Month is being celebrated all over the country in all different types of communities.
Yeah, and then President Gerald Ford formally recognized Black History Month and we've been rocking with it ever since.
Black Power fitth sign.
So, like we said, this episode, we reached out to you, and you guys gave us some great clips about what you're doing, and I can't wait to share those with everybody.
You know.
I have to say I don't like to give engineer in Hiss props, but y'all showed out.
Yes, y'all did, and I'm very proud as a fellow black and engineering person. I was very proud that that E and STEM came in strong.
It was a.
Capital E bold in the boldest font you can think of. So that's where we're going to start today. Yes, and so I think before we jump into our clips that we received, I think given a general overview of what engineering is and why it's important. Is important. So engineering is the how you apply science and math into the real world, into the things that we touch and feel.
So engineering is important because when you look around you at pretty much everything within sight, somebody had to engineer that. So they had to understand its characteristics, it's chemical properties, its structure in order to make something work well, for it to work efficiently, and for it to be useful for you. Engineers are very very important. I don't mean to toot our own horn.
But toue.
I think that's called laying on the horn. I don't even think that's tooting it. Well, that's fine, that's fine, that's fine. Engineering is important.
Engineers are important, and I am very proud to be an engineer and to be a black engineer.
Let's get into the clips.
My name is Chandler, and I'm a structural engineer in training. In my work, I take an architectural concept of a building and turn it into something that can withstand loads from people, equipment, winds, snow, earthquakes, and many other forces. Then I build structural models to analyze the forces on all of the structural members and produce drawings so that
it can be built. Structural engineering is important because it allows us to enjoy the beauty of the built environment while also staying safe and protected from the elements and forces around us.
Yes, the work that Chandler is doing is super important. If we think about any building, any structure that we've stepped into in our lives, a structural engineer has been a part of that. They have used their mind to make sure that that building stays up while we're in it. And the thing that we also have to consider is that what is taken into account when a structural engineer is working is not just oh, how does concrete stand up? How does rebar stand up? How do all these things
stand up? Brick whatever it allbar? So rebar is a reinforcing steel that they usually put in concrete just to help it hold together. So if you were to go to any building that was recently knocked down, you could see rebar all through the concrete and things like that. Okay, they also have to consider where that building is being or that structure is being built. So let's say that they're in the northeast. We get a lot of hurricanes here, so you have to build this structure with that in mind.
So you have to think, what are hurricane wins? How many miles per hour is that? And then they start to test those things out. So they might build like a mini a sample structure, and then they put it in a wind tunnel and let that wind just whip it just like how a hurricane would, and see if it stands up, if it stands up, they know that they're doing the right thing, and then they can use that material and build these buildings that protect us during
those times. That's the reason why when we have all of these really really harsh weather events, we feel so lucky that our houses don't fall down, you know. And then you also have to consider time and other events that we in our every day don't think about. So you have to consider how many people are going to be in this building, what is this building going to be used for?
Is how long should it last?
Right, So you have to take all those things into account when you are when you are building these structures. And let's not just focus on buildings. Let's talk about tunnels, bridges and things like that. So if you're thinking about a bridge that connects two pieces of land, that's what a bridge is. They have to consider how many cars are going to be going over it's the average amount of is going to be going over this in a year. What does it need to withstand? So then you have
to go through wear and tear testing for these different materials. Tunnels, is a tunnel going to be underwater? How many pounds per square inch of pressure doesn't need to withstand.
These are all the.
Things that structural engineers do, and this is why I love that field. I'm not a structural engineer, but I have so much respect for them.
I can't tell you're not a structural engineer. I don't know if this feels obvious or not, but it just occurred to me based on the things that you're saying.
Right.
Why you can look at something on TV that has multiple houses and you can kind of pinpoint this is where this is in America, or this is where this is in the world, right, because these structural engineers have optimized what a home should look or feel like based on what's happening in that area. Yeah, and you.
Know who the first structural engineers were the indigenous people of America. Yes, yeacause if you go out to places in like the desert or Arizona and how they build their houses, the indigenous people were doing that way before the structural the modern day structural engineers came along.
I was reading something about homes in Japan and how they have these narrow these narrow entry points, and something about where you spray the water on the ground so that evaporates so it feels cool and all of this
stuff people were doing. I'm like, these those are structural engineer structural engineers, and I think one of the things you hit, a structural engineer has to really understand the material that they're working with toom and it feels like structural engineering is a natural partner with material science.
Ooh, my other love, that's my main joint. That's my bay material science.
This is Cicily speaking. I am a fifth year PhD student studying chemistry and materials science. Right now, I'm using a confocal microscope, which is a tool that I use a lot because I study colloidal particle materials. So colleors are present in many cosmetic formulations. All the lotions, creams, things like this that you use. These are made up of coloidal emulsions, as well as the droplets of water that make up clouds in the sky, the milk in your fridge, the paint on your walls, all of these
things were developed using colloid chemistry. So specifically, I make solid coloidal particles, which can be thought of as really really small marbles. And this is important because, as I've mentioned, colloids are present in a lot of materials that you interact with daily and being able to manipulate the structure of the building block of these materials can give materials
with really interesting property. So, for example, coloidal particles can be used to create photonic crystals, which can emulate the kinds of iridescent color and diffraction patterns that you see in things like opals and clamshells and blue moor fro butterflies. So I create new colodo building blocks so that we can have some day, you know, screens that only require the input of light rather than the input of electricity.
So that's one of the applications of what I do. So, yeah, that's a bit about me material scientists.
I love this because just like Cicily, I am a material scientist as well. I didn't work with materials on the micrometer scale that I worked with materials that were on the nanometer scale, so a little bit smaller. But I totally understand the colloidal chemistry that she's doing and why this is so important. Okay, So colloidal particles are spherical, and they're dispersed. It can be dispersed in a gas,
a liquid, or solid. The ones that we most commonly understand are the ones that are dispersed in a liquid, and the reason why they're so cool and so important it's because when they're stable, everything looks nice and smooth, but if they're unstable, then things start to clump up and not look so great, and that balance between the
two is really really hard to find. So when people like Sicily are doing really novel work to create different structures inside of a colloidal suspension, whether it be solid liquid or gas, it is very very difficult to do, especially if those particles are not spherical. So when she talks about the butterfly and clamshells and how you could see those rainbow colors when you look at them, it's
the diffraction of light. And so when light hits those things because of the particle structure within the clamshell or in the butterfly wing, we see that rainbow because of how the light is reflecting back. Okay, so what she's doing is really really innovative and really really cool, and it's gonna change everything. So what you're saying is that we're getting this refraction of light and she's creating something
that will probably that could do the same thing. That feels like, I mean, I'm gonna get you, give you your engineering and.
Material science props. But that also feels like biomemicry, right. That feels like, okay, taking things that exist in biology and living organisms and recreating them right to advance to technology. Okay, I think we're in the biowheelhouse. I'm just gonna just gonna go ahead and say this is my spoke.
I see where you're going. Okay, So that we've had enough of the engineering talk, I am very excited to jump into the biosciences.
Biology is the study of living organisms. And people always say like, oh, biology is that means you with plants and animals, But there's so much more to it. Just like we learned about engineering at this macro scale when we talked about structural engineering and building things up, the
same parallels exist in biology. So you have people that study ecosystems and organisms and how they interact, and then you and how to build up systems and how to make them, how to make different types of organisms work together, which is what I used to be interested in, you know,
so microbial symbiosis. But then also there are people that study how to break these systems down and how to look at these things that are really tiny nano or micro level you know, before we were even recording this episode, I was telling you about these African sicklets, these fish.
You know.
I go down the rabbit hole.
My friend she watches one video on Twitter and I saw someone give a presentation on this earlier this week, and so it has really just rocked my world. And I'm like, there's so much we don't know about fish and behavior and things we can learn. And we have someone who's who called in? Who's a marine biologist? Perfect?
Perfect, let's hear it.
My name is Cinda Scott, and I'm a marine biologist. I'm the director of the Center for Tropical Island Biodiversity Studies at the School for Field Studies in Bocas del Toro, Panama. I'm female, I'm black. I'm originally from Boston, Massachusetts, and I live and work abroad in Panama. I chose a career in marine biology because I've always been fascinated by the fact that humans and fish have many genes in common. Fish are our oldest vertebrate ancestor, and through them we
can understand more about ourselves. In addition to the fascinating world of fish, I mean, they can change colors in the blink of an eye, they can switch sexes, and they have an incredible array of adaptations that we merror
humans barely understand. Fish can tell us so much about how we evolved, for example, major systems such as metabolism, and when you study fish and really see how varied their genome sizes are, you can really begin to understand how it's actually possible that so much diversity exists between species.
Sinda's work is really cool. I never even thought of any of that.
It feels very similar to this conversation we had with doctor Kismikia Corbett when we were preparing for the coronavirus episode. Do you remember, yes, you know, people often say, oh, why are they studying this grass opera or why are they studying bats? And why are they studying fish when there are so much human disease? But like she said, we share genetic information with these organisms, right.
Yeah, so potentially studying those organisms and animals it could lead to us discovering potential cures for maybe diseases that we have as humans.
I mean, I think it just leads to broader understanding of life in general. Right, changes over time, advantageous changes, things that we can see different branch points where things have evolved in different ways. Exactly, there's so much to learn there. To quote Jay Z, here we.
Go hope did that, so hopefully you wouldn't have to go through that. These animals, these animals are experiencing these things that almost directly mirror what we go through. If they have found a way to adapt or learn a way to heal themselves or anything like that, if they have the secret, why should we have to go through that. They're here to help us. We're all living in this animal kingdom together. And so that brings us to one
of our next topics, which is human disease. One of my first, it was actually my second research experience, was working with this professor, doctor EMMANUELA.
Taioli. It was an epidemiology lab, and I studied mammographic density, and so we would look at they would look at mammograms and based on like there was some program they had and based on how the mammogram looked, you could kind of get an idea of breast density, and so they were trying to see if there was a correlation. They were saying that it seemed like African American women their breast density was higher and they were trying to see if there was a correlation between breast density and
predictions about breast cancer from the mammograms. It was like this MAM's data set. I don't know. It was my sophomore year.
Girl, I still trying to learn.
It was a summer research experience.
That's really interesting work.
Though I don't know what they found on the study. But you know, you never finish a study and never right. And this next topic is special to me. The caller, right, this is one of my really good friends and we've been friends for a really long time, and he is the reason I didn't leave Hampton the first year. And I was like, I am in the first week. Okay, it was right after Labor Day.
I want to go.
And that's exactly what I said. And if you've been to Hampton, you know you can't have a car on campus. And I was like, well, you drive me back to North Carolina.
I've got to get home.
I don't think this is for me. I should have gone to A and T. And he just really helped me stay on the path. So he was a chemistry major. I was a biology major. We knew each other from high school, went to the same college and then he went to med school, and so I'll let you hear about what he does.
Hi, my name is Randy Miles, and I am a doctor at Massachusetts General Hospital affiliated with Harvard Medical School. I am a radiologist who specializes in breast imaging, which means I interpret X rays of the breast called mammograms, looking for any signs of breast cancer. So in the US, about one out of eight women will develop breast cancer over their lifetime. So it is important, I repeat very important, that women at average risk receive a mammogram every year,
starting at age forty. Our goal is to find cancers if they do develop when they are small so they are easily treated. So if you're listening to this you are a woman and you are over the age of forty and are not up to date with your mammogram, don't be scared, Go get screen.
Friends.
Science is such a big part of my job, from X ray generation to performing procedures. Yes, I do biopsies. Two. My job is dope, just not as dope as Zakia and TT. For more information on breast cancer and breast imaging, please follow me on Twitter at our Miles.
MDD Randy rand.
We love Randy, we do.
And the work he's doing is so important, you know. I think one of the things that I've been really interested in is the awareness around health, like just health awareness and prioritizing one's health, especially in the black community, right. And I think the people that are doing STEM outreach they're spreading that message too, right. They're saying like, this is important, this is what you should be doing, this is why this matters. This is how one thing is
linked to another. I was talking to someone the other day and we were talking about dental health, which a lot of people think of based on how our current insurance system is as a luxury. But gum disease and bacteria in your gums can lead to heart disease because it's all linked to the same blood system. And I'm like, who knew? I mean, I knew it, But do you think about that when you think about brushing your teeth floss and do you think about heart health?
That's why I brush my teeth before I eat.
Okay, that's good Britsting. Okay, So we've heard from some of you, but we have some more people coming up. We're gonna take a quick break and when we come back. We're going to tell you all about STEM education and outreach.
And we're back, and so now we are going to jump into something that is very important, and that is STEM education and outreach. Yeah, a lot of folks think that STEM is just in the classroom.
They can be more wrong.
Bunsen burners, beakers and all these things like that. There is so much more to STEM than meets the eye.
Yeah, I think you know. It's education. Yes, in the classroom, yes it's important, but it's also tying those principles to day to day things that you see, right, you understand importance, You understand, yes, the topic or the content, but then you see how it's related to all these other systems that we use every day. Like you just said about structural engineering, I don't think about that when I go in the house and walk upstairs and hope the floor
doesn't I don't hope the floor doesn't fall in. It's just not gonna fall. Yeah, you know, I think about that kind of stuff with civil engineers who make sure that our water gets to us and it's not contaminated. I'm looking at you, Flint, but I mean there's just so many things that are happening that are related to STEM and we don't immediately consider them STEM. And I think we can kind of raise our awareness with that.
And the people that are doing that are folks that are in STEM education and in outreach.
Yes.
So when we think about twenty first century learning, that's not just in the classroom, that's on the apps, that's podcast like this one exactly everywhere.
Yes, And with all this new technology and ways to educate ourselves, the amount of points where STEM can touch you are increasing exponentially. And so we loved hearing from people who had STEM backgrounds and are in STEM outreach, and then some that don't have STEM backgrounds and then STEM outreach and so let's listen to that now.
Hi, my name is Mercedes Crawford from Houston, Texas, but currently living in Washington, DC. My STEM career is not like everyone else's. I do not have a STEM background, but my goal and my passion in life is to introduce students from K through twelve into STEM careers. I've spent the last ten years introducing our amazing students to what STEM can do for them, their families, in their communities, and I will continue to do that as long as I can. So keep up the good work, girls. I
use your podcast all the time. I love it, and I hope to meet you one day.
Thanks.
I think the K through twelve you know how I feel about that.
M hmm.
K through twelve is where my heart is a lot of my My first exposure to STEM education was in the K through twelve arena. Me too.
Now.
They used to participate in this program called boost back when we read Duke and boy, those fifth graders were giving me a run for my money. Okay. We would meet these fifth graders and they would be in the program through and they would join the program for the sixth through eighth grade, and we would have these Saturday activities and we work with them and then they would build up to this one post of presentation and it would just blow my mind to see how much they
learned we would do these joint activities. I still think about my boost kids all the time.
That is.
I love that.
And I remember when I was in when when I was in grad school with you, I was organizing graduate students from all different backgrounds to go to this middle school and talk about the work that they do, like yeah, really relaxed and like ted talks style so that kids can see themselves in us basically and let them know like how we got there, Like a lot of people had struggle stories about how they got to being in graduate school. And it just kind of humanizes what a
scientist is. Because what I would always ask in the beginning, like what do you think a scientist looks like? And they would describe this old guy with a lab coat, pocket, protector, glasses and all these they basically were describing with Albert Einstein or whatever they thought he looked like. And so I would bring these people in and say, look, I'm a scientist, they're a scientist, and we're regular. So it really I feel like it really helps to show those
things to the k through twelve students. So I think, yes, it's both exposing students, exposing students to careers in science and helping them see what a scientist looks like and then just giving them a deep dive, hands on experience in science.
And our next caller has done that.
Hi, doctor Serena mcala, and I am the president and founder of I Research Foundation and I Research Institute. With regards to the foundation, we raise funds to support underrepresented and underprivileged young adults who are interested in science research but maybe don't have access to complete science research projects.
And at the Foundation, we provide them an opportunity to work at I research institute on either learning about research methods and the steps in order to become a researcher, how to write an abstract, how to write a paper, or at the four week level where they are more advanced students, we actually help them create projects that we provide all of the reagents for and equipment for and allow them to use this arena, this laboratory to conduct
novel experimentation that they could use to write again research papers or to compete in some of the scholarship money that's available for STEM students. So overall, the goal of our research institute and foundation is to really bring STEM to the masses. We want high school age students to be fully invested in the research process in any discipline of science that they're interested in, and we help them to achieve that goal through working with us.
And that last caller was being really modest. Yes, listen, she is a rock star science teacher.
Okay, googles, y'all do your googles.
That was doctor Serena mcala, who has sends amazing projects to the International Science Fair.
Not that Science Fair that y'all did.
This is how a plant grows.
Those kinds. We know that a plant goes with water and light. We know that. Talking about real, probably big projects.
Okay, these are high schoolers and you can learn more about her work and check her out. There's a national geographic documentary called Science Fair that features her and nine of her students who go to the International Science Fair.
I can't wait to watch it. The kid described it as cheer but for a science and I'm hooked already. Okay, So what Serena and Mercedes are doing is creating the future job market, yes, in the STEM field. And that leads us to our next point that STEM is not just sitting at the bench, sitting at a lab bench and mixing chemicals and dissecting things. No, STEM is an enterprise.
You're so right. I think too often we get into this tunnel vision about what STEM science is. This is having on a lab coat, is having a pipette, or it's using a microscope, And I'm like, no, somebody's got to write these budgets. Somebody's got to write these grantly, somebody has.
To do it with the understanding of how these fields work, so right with a lens, a STEM lens.
Yes, And I think that's something that's overlooked when we think about careers in STEM. People say, not everybody can be a professor. Hey, let me tell you. I was there. That's not the only career in stam okay.
And so our next caller is a perfect example of that. She went from being in a more traditional STEM career, I should say, and using those skills to make a productive STEM enterprise.
Hey, Dove Levs, my name is Kierana and I'm receiving my master's in Engineering management. Now, my engineering degree is not a traditional research based engineering degree, But before I got into my master's program, I received my bachelor's in chemical engineering, where I spent some years as a research
and development engineer in the nuclear industry. Being in the nuclear industry is super important because so many people don't understand it, and it's really important that once you understand how FISSI reactions work and how you work in nuclear that you're not as afraid of it. My master's program is something that's more focused on engineering management, and a lot of people don't think of management when they think of engineering. But engineering is more than just being in
the lab or doing STEM research. There's so many different sizes including project management, product management, operations, and black people need to be represented on all levels. So that's what really motivated me to get into my current program.
Now, being a part of this industry has been so rewarding for the both of us. That's how Dope Lab was born, you know, being black and STEM and being a part of groups that help foster our education and community and everything like that. And so we are always advocates for people finding community no matter where they are and so that they can be their very best selves.
We loved hearing you guys talk about finding your true north. What drives you when it's not easy? What keeps you in the lab when those results aren't looking right? What keeps you in the field when you're tired and you know you need to collect another another data point right? What drives you to go and talk to those kids even though they're talking while you're talking them?
Kids be so bad. But we honestly really loved it because it shows that this community is growing and the folks inside of it were lifting as we climb and you.
Love to see it.
I'd love to see it.
I love being a black woman and I love being an engineer. I get to represent us, but even more than that, I get to help bringing our perspectives to the table in each of our respective sim fields, and hopefully you start a bigger conversation that can trickle down and positively affect young black boys and girls who may see themselves in us and realize that they're more than capable of excelling in any field that.
I really want to encourage young people, especially students of color, out there, to get involved in our environment and to work in fields where we are severely underrepresented. Marine biology in particular is one of those fields, as is environmental studies and conservation. And I think conservation for so long has had one narrative and it usually does not even include the very people who are affected by the policies that are put in place, and that needs to change,
and more voices need to be heard. And so there are some days when I'm out there doing field work and we're like the only boat out there, and I think, how is this possible that no one else is out here? Am I the only person out here? Looking at this and what is this black girl from Boston doing out in the mangroves in an isolated area of Panama, surrounded by a bunch of islands and fish, And does any of this work even matter? And the answer is absolutely yes, and I absolutely love it.
I'm here now and I hope to help the next generation to achieve their goals into full and love with the science is the way I have.
But at the end of the day, I'm an engineer, a stem enthusiast at heart, and a Steminus to today I die and I'm black.
It be black black.
That's it for Lab twenty four and Semester two.
Oh my gosh. We're gonna miss you, guys. We're going on a.
Break, yes, but we will be back. Don't begin to check our website for some links to amazing scientists who we love.
Make sure you're following us on Instagram and Twitter so that you can keep up with what we're doing during our break.
Yes, and we will announce when we're coming back. We want you to be the first to know. Yes. TT is on Twitter at d r underscore t Sho and.
You can find Zakiya at z said so.
Dope Labs is produced by Jenny Rattle at mass of Wave Runner Studios, with help from Elizabeth Nakano. Mixing and sound designed by Hannis Brown.
Original theme music is by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex Sugi Eurra, with additional music by Elijah Alex Harvey.
Dope Labs is a production of Spotify Studios and Mega Own Media Group and is executive produced by us T. T. Shadiah and Zakiah Wattley. You don't think I would tell you for breath snolk stink stinkd.
Jimmy, don't tell me my husband. Don't tell him.
It's because he love you. I don't love you like that.
I say, Hey girl, somebody needs to tell me