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I guess I became an engineer because it seemed like a logical way to extend my childhood hobbies into a career. Growing up, I loved doing jigsaw puzzles, building model cars, and figuring out how things work. My choice was also probably influenced by the fact that I was not allowed to have a chemistry set, but I did have multiple building sets, and especially enjoyed playing with those that had battery-powered moving parts. There was something very satisfying in knowing that if I put this here and this there, that will happen. I earned my Bachelors of Science in Engineering (emphasis in Chemical) degree from Harvey Mudd College in 1999. As a senior, I was team leader on an industry project for Clorox, in which we worked on improving bleach filtering techniques to reduce the metal ion content of the product. Directly after completing my undergraduate degree, I came to graduate school in the UCSF/UC Berkeley Joint Graduate Group in Bioengineering. I am interested in designing drugs for the brain, working to both address specific disease states and improve general drug delivery to the brain through the resistant blood brain barrier. I work in an Addiction Neuroscience lab where we are trying to understand the short and long term changes in the brain caused by drugs of abuse, and to use this understanding to develop a therapeutic to decrease the likelihood of relapse. Specifically, I am studying the electrophysiological and cellular effects of different types of opioids on the reward circuit in the brain. I think this work is exciting because the work I am doing will allow me to participate in the drug development process from the very first stages of choosing target receptors and designing a molecule through pre-clinical and clinical trials. It is also exciting because the brain system we study is involved in Parkinson's Disease and many psychological disorders including obsessive compulsive disorder and depression, and therefore our work provides insights into the mechanisms of these other diseases in addition to addiction. I think my biggest challenge as a woman in engineering was getting my male college classmates to understand that I had something professional to contribute; I worked on many a team in which I wound up thinking the equivalent of "I told you so," because my teammates would only consider my suggestions after those of my male colleagues had failed. Interestingly enough, at the same time none of my professors or mentors ever seemed to lack confidence in my work or ideas.
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