NOTEWORTHY: As the chief technology officer of a 2-year-old startup, Black leads the effort of nanoengineering silicon to boost its energy-trapping efficiency without making the solar cell more expensive to produce. Bandgap has garnered $6 million worth of venture capital funding and will put it to work over the next year tweaking the cell’s design and finding ways to partner with other solar cell makers.

ON WANTING TO BECOME A SCIENTIST
“For me, my strengths have always been math and science … the environmental aspects. Clean energy definitely has economic impacts, and I recognize all that, but my strengths are best suited to help the world solve the energy problem. Solar is unique among renewable-energy resources because it can be the primary source of energy moving forward. Not only does it fit in with what I’m good at, but it can help change the world.”

ONE THING YOU’VE LEARNED FROM STARTING YOUR OWN COMPANY
“It’s a lot of work but it’s been fun. You have to believe (the technology) is going to work before it works … but I’e been lucky to have a very good co-founder. We kind of joke that he’s getting a lesson in Photovoltaics 101 and I’m getting a lesson in Business 101.”

WHERE WILL YOUR COMPANY BE TWO YEARS FROM NOW?
“We have eight people right now, and we plan on keeping it there until the technology is ready. We have a prototype and we’re optimizing that prototype, then we will have to make it marketable.”

FAVORITE PASTIMES
“I have two kids — that’s pretty much what I do. Once in a while, I get a chance to sneak to the gym.”

IS THERE STILL A BARRIER TO WOMEN PURSUING HARD SCIENCES?
“The women before us have gotten rid of many of the barriers, but there is still very subtle discouragement of women. There are so many challenges in the world that I don’t think we can afford to limit the talent pool.”

Thoughts on Black
James Maxwell, team leader and scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory

“We were very sad to see her go. She was a real asset to our team, bringing a strong background in solid-state science, particularly photovoltaics. We generally don’t hire two people with the same backgrounds, and she proved to be one of the best employees we had at Los Alamos.
Sometimes you can get so specialized that you render yourself useless. Not only did Marcie have strong specialized experience, but she also had a broad enough background to work on new projects. She was a great person to work with.”

NOTEWORTHY: She is co-founder of three health care IT companies — Humedica, the Institute for Health Metrics and PrivaSource — and the founding director of the Health Law Institute, part of a nonprofit organization working for people with HIV/AIDS and at-risk children. Breitenstein was the primary drafter of the Massachusetts Act to Protect the Privacy of Medical Records and has been an expert resource regarding health data privacy. She teaches ethics at the Harvard School of Public Health. At Humedica, she helps design data-analytic tools that improve patient care and safety and the operational performance of health-care organizations.

ON GETTING INTO THE BUSINESS
“I’m definitely the accidental capitalist, the accidental technologist. I started as an attorney working with homeless kids on the street. It was really intense — I get personally invested in people. It got me interested in health care, thinking we should be using information to make health care better and cheaper, especially for people who are underserved.”

ISSUES FACING HEALTH CARE
“I hear people talking about genomic medicine and curing cancer with a sexy drug, but the most dangerous thing about walking into a hospital is walking into a hospital. Most people with cancer don’t die of cancer, they die of pneumonia or an infection or something else. We need to make health care itself better and safer.”

WHAT SHE’S MOST PROUD OF
“The people I work with. It’s one thing to accomplish something, it’s another to find the right people with whom to accomplish that thing with. I feel the team we’ve assembled around us (at Humedica) are just extraordinary people. It’s the people I’m proudest of.”

WHAT SHE LIKES TO PLAY WITH IN HER SPARE TIME
“This is so geeky, but I just bought one of those things you can download movies off the Internet with and play on TV, which is great, because I’m a lazy sod.”

THE BEST JOB
“Sailing instructor when I was a kid. After college I had the chance to join an all-women sailing crew in a race around the world, but I had to go to law school instead, for financial reasons. Sailing is what I’d be doing if I weren’t doing this.”

Thoughts on Breitenstein
Michael Weintraub, president and CEO of Humedica

ON WORK ETHICS: “She is the absolute definition of an entrepreneur. A.G. works harder than anyone, and not just at the visionary level, but at the building and implementation levels too.”
ON VISION: “A.G.’s got real passion. She spent the last decade talking to anyone and everyone who had issues or problems with health care and turned it into a vision for a business.”
ON SMARTS: “Although A.G. is a recovering attorney, she is off-the-grid smart and practical on many levels, thinking up companies, helping draft medical information privacy laws. A number of VCs said, ‘You’ve just got to meet her.’ ”

NOTEWORTHY: Led IBM’s effort to build the first petaflop (one thousand trillion floating point operations per second) supercomputer.

AND MORE: Dedicated to using soccer to help the girls on her 9-year-old daughter’s soccer team to thrive in math and science.

ENTRY INTO TECH
“I grew up in Manchester (N.H.) and attended public schools. But spent a summer in a program at St. Paul’s School. If I look back, that is the one thing that really got me to understand how much I enjoy math and science. It was an AP physics program for gifted New Hampshire students.”

MENTORS
She readily names a half dozen. “I think my first important mentor was Swati Sharma, a high school teacher I had for trigonometry my sophomore year. Swati believed in me and gave me all the problems I needed to work on to keep me excited about math.”

SUCCESS AT IBM
“I knew I’d be finishing up school, and I also was engaged to be married, so I needed to be somewhere where my husband (software engineer) could get work too.

MANUFACTURING
“I wanted to be a researcher, but a friend advised me that I would be much more valuable as a researcher if I first learned how things were made.”

THE ROADRUNNER SUPERCOMPUTER AND NEW LIFESTYLE
“A few things came together. I had an opportunity in the systems and technology group on a project to build a petaflop computer for Los Alamos National Lab. My third child was on the way, and at the same time my mother became ill. IBM made it possible for me to take the assignment, work from home, and help take care of my mother. My husband could become a stay-at-home dad.” Roadrunner was based on standard hardware, 6,500 Advanced Micro Devices Opteron processors and the IBM Cell Broadband engine. “We decided we would make the project focused on software, mostly systems and application runtime software.”

ACCOMPLISHMENTS
“I helped to build the first petaflop computer, and people think that’s amazing. But I don’t want people to judge me on that. I know my greatest accomplishment at the end of the day is that I have my three children and my husband. You can do incredible things in technology but I always have to keep that balanced with my family life.”

Thoughts on Crawford
Nancy A. Greco, distinguished engineer and Catherine Crawford’s direct manager at IBM

“What’s unique about Cait is that she not only can see the big picture, she can break it down into components in terms of what has to get done or what has to be built. … She can show people the big picture and how they fit into it, and that’s why they get excited about it.”
“What I like about Cait also is that she is getting kids more interested in science. What helps is that with her as a coach, kids know that she is a scientist, but she’s a real person and she’s fun. They need a role model, so that they can think, ‘This person looks like me. I can be smart and I can be athletic.’ ”

NOTEWORTHY: She has made significant contributions to radar programs for the defense of the U.S. She was instrumental in the design of the radome for the SPY-3 Engineering Demonstration Model radar; she led the thermal analysis of Transmit/Receive Integrated Multichannel Module for the THAAD radar; and she led the team defining ship interface requirements for Cobra Judy Replacement mission equipment.

AND MORE: She gave the keynote address at the 2007 Women in Science and Math Conference, an event for girls in grades 6-8; volunteered with Raytheon Girls’ Leadership Summit; and gave a talk on “10 Things You Should Know About Earning a Ph.D.” for high school students.

GETTING HOOKED ON MATERIALS ENGINEERING
When she was at the University of Maryland a professor explained how a helicopter’s framework absorbed the impact of a crash. “The structure would be lost, but the occupants would be protected. I guess that’s pretty standard, but at the time I was pretty wowed by it.” After gaining a Ph.D., researching composites for airplanes, she discovered a different kind of fascination -— the kind managing entire projects can provide.

CAREER GROWTH
Her work at Raytheon taught her to look beyond the engineer’s challenge of unraveling a single problem, and to see how every component of an engineering project fits together. She now runs Integrated Defense Systems’ internal research and development program. “We’ve looked ahead to what business we want to be in and have figured out what some of the technology gaps are, and these projects have aimed directly at some of those technology gaps.”
“I like being part of a big team. The systems that we design here are so capable and so complex that it takes a big team to pull it all together, and I like having that global point of view to where you can see the different parts that have come together.”

GIRLS AND ENGINEERING
“Thinking back to where I was in 7th grade, it was the first time where students were really given a choice about the classes they took. One of my best friends and I were two of the only girls who opted for wood shop rather than cooking. I still can’t cook.” But she calls her husband a great cook.
“I liked learning how to do stuff. When it came to choosing engineering I liked the practical application of math and science, the idea of fixing a problem. I had some really talented girlfriends. I’m not the only engineer among us. My parents were very supportive.”

Thoughts on Crews
Ellen Ferraro, Director of Engineering Operations for Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems

WHAT MAKES HER SPECIAL: “She holds a Ph.D. in aeronautical engineering but she was willing to step outside of her comfort zone and go to work for our corporate offices, and now she is leading our internal research and development efforts at IDS.”

WHAT DRIVES HER: “She’s very committed and dedicated, but she’s also very humble and modest. She doesn’t come in and state her credentials and think that that will earn her respect. She earns respect by what she does every day in leading by example.”

NOTEWORTHY: She launched Aura Biosciences after 10 years of work in oncology research. She is the co-inventor of technologies behind two U.S. patents covering Aura’s Nanosmart technology platform, which is a nanotechnology-based delivery system for new drug targets.

AND MORE: Her company was one of 26 technology firms invited to participate in the World Economic Forum’s technology pioneers program in Davos, Switzerland.

WHAT WILL THAT MEAN FOR THE COMPANY WHEN YOU PERMANENTLY LOCATE HERE?
“Actually it has worked well so far. I’ve come here for 10 days at a time, I do several meetings a day, I can work all the time, and then go back and can spend time with the kids. But one reason I established the company in Cambridge is to be a part of this cluster, to be near the knowledge, the people, the capital and the network. If you look outside, competitors are down the block, pharmaceutical companies that might become partners or acquirers are three blocks away. We never feel isolated here. The only downside of the move is that it’s a horrible time to sell (property) in Madrid.”

BIGGEST CHALLENGE
“We were looking for money in October 2008. European investors were very reluctant to invest in a U.S. company, because there was so much uncertainty about the U.S. banking system. We had to get a federally insured bank. But eventually the private European investors came through. You have to make them believe in the entrepreneur, believe that it’s not the moment that’s important, it’s the technology and the team.”

OUTSIDE OF WORK
“You never get away from being an entrepreneur, but that’s OK. It’s my passion. I try to complement my work and home life. My kids are so proud. My son told his teacher that his mother goes to work by plane.”

WHAT COULD BE DONE TO SWELL THE RANKS OF WOMEN ENTREPRENEURS?
“Well, I went to Davos and went to a meeting on the empowerment of women, and it was really nice to see that — all those women leaders from around the world. One of the speakers said something that is really true: You have to be fearless. But it doesn’t mean what you think, that you aren’t afraid. You have to go after your dream, even if you are afraid. Also, sometimes you have to accept that you don’t run a company like a man CEO — but you get results. We don’t have to lose our identity as women.”

Thoughts on De Los Pinos
Laura Barker Morse, Managing director of Entrepreneurship Ventures Inc. and an Aura board member.

“I’ve never seen anyone who was as good at taking in information, and then making good decisions, without hesitation. She’s a very brave CEO.”
“She has an innately gracious personality and an engaging style. She is good at getting support from people because people like her. She is always appreciative and responsive to any advice.”
(Laura Morse’s husband, MIT’s Ken Morse on why de los Pinos will succeed) “Raw intelligence. She is highly discplined and she has a pleasant persistence.”

NOTEWORTHY: She forges alliances between GlaxoSmithKline and biotechs to foster innovative drug development leading to improved medical care. In her early 30s, Dipp has already played a significant role in structuring deals to develop drugs to fight inflammatory diseases and muscular dystrophy.

AND MORE: She is a member of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center’s Research Strategy Committee and the American Diabetes Association Greater Boston Leadership Council, as well as a member of the board of directors for Roxbury’s City on a Hill Charter School and president of the nonprofit Healthy Lifespan Institute.

MAJOR CHALLENGES FACED
“One of the professional challenges I’ve overcome – and one that I’ve found to be most rewarding — was orchestrating the successful acquisition of Sirtris Pharmaceuticals by GSK. We placed a lot of importance on what life at Sirtris would be like post-acquisition and how to retain staff to continue fostering a thriving biotech spirit.”

CHALLENGES AHEAD
“One of the biggest challenges facing the industry today is the increasing cost of health care. What we do know is that by more effectively treating diseases of aging — including Type 2 diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular disease and neurodegeneration — we have the potential to change our health-care system as we know it.”

ON GIVING BACK TO THE COMMUNITY
“I make it a priority to be active in the community through charitable causes and nonprofit organizations. I’m currently the president of the Healthy Lifespan Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to extending healthy lifespan by studying, educating and testing the rapid advances in the science and medicine of aging. Through my work at Sirtris, I became very excited about the potential of new scientific discoveries to help treat diseases of aging.

FAVORITE PERSONAL TECHNOLOGY?
“I’m a tech geek, so my purse is filled with chargers for my Blackberry, MiFi, iPod and Kindle — but unfortunately no hairbrush. A friend recently told me about (file synchronization app) SugarSync, so I think I’m about to become a fan of that as well. If I had to choose one? Blackberry, hands down.”

LIFE OUTSIDE OF WORK?
“One of my passions outside of work is ballet. At one point, I wanted to be a professional ballerina, but I’m not talented enough.”

Thoughts on Dipp
Phillip Sharp, Institute Professor, David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT

ON LEADERSHIP: “Michelle’s a fantastic leader … dedicated to moving projects forward. … She’s the kind of person who gets things done, and in a way that pleases everyone.”
ON MENTORING: “My daughter moved back here and started working for a biotech real estate firm. … Michelle happened to meet her and has been a mentor to her for a number of years without talking about it. Michelle’s willingness to take time out from her demanding life and mentor a young person like this speaks highly of her and the kind of person she is.”

NOTEWORTHY: Drury is a leader in human-computer interaction and human-robot interaction research, bridging work among industry, academia and government.

YOU ARE WHERE YOU LIVE:
Among the 10 states where Drury lived during her youth, she noted the formidable impact of Richland, Wash. — home of the Manhattan Project development site. “You couldn’t go five feet before tripping over a physicist.” In high school, her family moved to the Chicago area, near the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, setting up more science-oriented field trips.

DEFINING CAREER MOVE:
Drury moved to the Boston area after college to begin her career at MITRE as a general systems engineer — “which was amusing to me at the time because I didn’t know what that was until I became one.”

THE HUMAN FACTOR:
When Drury was working for MITRE on assignment in The Netherlands in the 1980s, she researched a problem with a surveillance aircraft communicating information to people on the ground. In seeing people abandoning the more-difficult communication process in favor of a shortcut, albeit a data-corrupting one, she realized the need for technology ease, referred to as human-computer interaction. “How do teams of people work together and what do they need for efficient work? That’s where my collaboration work comes in,” she said.

THE ROBOT FACTOR:
Drury has applied her knowledge to human-robot interaction research through MITRE’s internal R&D program. The work has led to her development of design guidelines and techniques, used by other researchers worldwide, for evaluating human direction of robots in safety-critical situations.

30 YEARS AT MITRE, GOING STRONG:
She credits that loyalty to the opportunities presented to her. “My job now isn’t anything like what it was when I first started.” And it’s not like a commercial company that finds its niche making one particular widget. “Government comes to (MITRE) with problems they can’t solve. They’re hard problems and they change over time. Therefore, we’re never asked to do the same thing.”

WHAT MAKES YOU TICK:
“I like to learn new things. I would’ve been bored at any other company.”

Thoughts on Drury
Anita King, department head, multimedia and collaboration department, at The MITRE Corp.

“I am constantly in awe of how tireless she is in pursuit of her work.”
“In my mind, Jill’s greatest accomplishment, her legacy if you will, is her influence on the next generation. Whether it is through her teaching of human-computer interaction as an adjunct professor of computer science at UMass Lowell or her mentoring of the junior staff in our department, Jill is constantly helping to nurture the next generation of research scientists in HCI and HRI.”

NOTEWORTHY: Founded Crimson Hexagon to develop sophisticated listening and analysis tools to help distill meaning about brands, products and services in online conversations through social media.

AND MORE: Involved with The Second Step, a program that supports women and children in their efforts to leave abusive relationships and to go out on their own.

ON STARTUPS
“I had always wanted to work for a startup.… The year 2000 was when things were just bursting. I saw all these business plans, and I wasn’t really excited about them. So I took a job I liked and kept my radar on. (I said), ‘If I want to make this happen, no one else is going to do it.’ There’s the reward of seeing what you can do with a small group of people. I love that you can take someone fresh out of school, give them responsibility they would never have at a big company, and watch them knock it out of the park.”

THE VALUE OF ANALYSIS TOOLS
“I think gut feel and intuition are very valuable in business, but there are a number of times I’ve seen when you’re making significant decisions that real data to back up your decision can be invaluable. Gut feeling and intuition can be misleading. When you find new ways to run numbers or to calculate things you hadn’t known, it adds so much value to the way you’re operating.”

ON MAJORING IN ENGLISH AND ENGINEERING
“I loved operations, but I knew I was going to take all my electives in literature. Dickens and Austen — I love them. A lot of my English teachers would comment that my papers were written very differently than most other English majors. The literature I read these days consists of Mr. Putter and Tabby and Dr. Seuss.”

A CALIFORNIAN (LOS ALTOS) IN BOSTON
“There are so many good job opportunities and so many great people in Boston, we’ve ended up staying. It was less of a conscious decision and more just that every time I had an opportunity in my career that might have allowed us to switch, it didn’t work for him (husband Lee, a professor at Harvard Business School). Once you have kids you kind of put down roots.”

BALANCING WORK AND LIFE
“Having a family is actually what empowers you to be successful. I couldn’t do this without them. There’s nothing more revitalizing when you come home from a hard day and before you’ve put your briefcase down you’re tackle-hugged by these two little people.”

Thoughts on Fleming
Maria Cirino, of .406 Ventures and an investor in Crimson Hexagon

“Candace stands out for her compelling combination of intellect and enthusiasm. She’s engaging and fiercely determined, yet is self effacing and sports a calm demeanor.”
“Candace is driven by a desire to make an impact and leave her mark on the world. She has a deep and expansive vision for the impact that her company can have on companies as they seek to deepen their relationships with their customers.”

NOTEWORTHY: Hall holds 11 U.S. patents and has published more than 100 journal articles and conference papers.

ON DISCOVERING SCIENCE
“I really liked all kinds of subjects. I enjoyed learning and when I went off to college my intention was to go into politics. I really wanted to make the world a better place. People used to say, ‘You can’t beat City Hall.’ That always made me mad. Yes you can, or if you can’t beat it, let’s change it or make it right. But when I got to college, I took a physics course thinking, ‘Well, I’ll fulfill my science requirement,’ and you know, that freshman year physics course, I just loved it. Being in the lab and connecting the equations in the book with how stuff works. I really fell in love with it. I pretty much decided on the spot that I would be a physics major.”

AT LINCOLN LABS, KNOWN FOR DEFENSE WORK, DID YOU FEEL A CONFLICT BETWEEN YOUR ‘FIGHT CITY HALL’ ATTITUDE AND THE RESEARCH?
“In some ways it is the same motivation, right? You are trying to do things that make the world a better place. You are trying to solve problems, you are trying to understand what limits things and trying to find ways around it. I didn’t pursue that in a political way but in some ways science is very similar. The kinds of projects I was working on had to do with optical communications and optical switching, and these are things that are out in the commercial marketplace now.”

WHAT DO YOU LIKE ABOUT THE STARTUP WORLD
“What has always been important to me is working with great people, and we always had not just smart people but [people] with diverse backgrounds. I really loved the startup experience — you’re sort of out on your own, you are building a team. You are doing everything from inventing something incredibly interesting to taking out the trash.”

WHAT DO YOU DO OUTSIDE OF WORK?
“I have two children. I have an 18-year-old son and a 15-year-old daughter. One thing that happens when you work at a startup, you work crazy hours, so anytime I have the opportunity to spend time with my kids, that’s absolutely my favorite thing to do. It’s really fun to watch them grow and as they find the things that they love, being able to share that with them is great — go to their games and plays and things like that.”
“I was an athlete when I was in college. I played volleyball, basketball and lacrosse. A lot of my fondest memories from college are things that happened on those teams or on the field, and a lot of my best friends are the people I played sports with.”

Thoughts on Hall
Eric Giler, CEO of WiTricity Corp.

“Katie has an incredible can-do spirit and sense of humor. No matter how daunting a challenge we present her with, she finds a way to break problems down into bite-sized pieces that her team can address. No matter how overwhelming a technical or business situation that we might face, she can lighten up the room with joke or a story.
“As for the most difficult part (of working with her) … not choking on our sandwiches when she tells an especially hilarious joke — or makes a painful pun — at the company lunch table.”

NOTEWORTHY: Newman is working on the next generation of spacesuit for astronauts, a form-fitting “second skin” to give astronauts increased mobility, and keep them from suffering joint injuries caused by wearing the familiar, bulky spacesuit in training exercises. She is partnering with Aurora Flight Sciences Corp. on a grant from NASA on testing the suit on a robot that would simulate the joints of an astronaut.

ON GIVING BACK
In her hometown of Helena, Mont., Newman helped Exploration Works, a science museum, land a $500,000 grant to host space exploration exhibits over the next four years, including visits from MIT and NASA researchers. The second year of the grant will fund an exhibit allowing visitors to experience gravity similar to that on the Moon or Mars. The third year will focus on spacesuit technology and the role of women in aerospace research.
Newman works with the Sally Ride Science Festival, which looks to expose fifth to eighth grade girls to STEM fields.

ON INSPIRATION
Newman works with the SEED Academy, an MIT outreach program, and the Cambridge Science Day, an MIT museum program. Newman didn’t have such programs when she was a girl, but got her motivation elsewhere. “I was pretty inspired by Apollo.”

TEN-YEAR GAP
Newman was disappointed last month when NASA’s Constellation program was not included in President Obama’s Fiscal 2011 budget, effectively cancelling it. Constellation included updates such as Orion, a new design for manned spacecraft, and Newman’s pressure suits.
Obama is expected to explain his plan for NASA next month. That plan is expected to include a shift to commercial spacecraft.
Newman said the decision would create a gap of about 10 years in space exploration, to the point when commercial spaceflight becomes viable. During this time, NASA would be grounded while other countries, such as Russia and China fly manned missions. She is cautiously optimistic, saying there was hope a commercial spaceflight could create opportunity, but said private spaceflight may be “an order of magnitude” more challenging.
“It’s up in the air,” she said. “The dust will settle.”

Thoughts on Newman
Jessica Duda, senior research scientist, Aurora Flight Sciences

Duda, who took Newman’s aerospace, biomedical and life support engineering class at MIT, and worked with her at MIT’s Man Vehicle Lab, now collaborates with Newman as a colleague. Newman’s open-minded, hands-off approach empowers her students to follow through on their ideas – even off-the-wall ones – and learn on their own.
“I have never seen her say, ‘Don’t do that, it’s not going to work.’”

NOTEWORTHY: Her work has led to breakthroughs in electronic systems design and packaging. Her team is developing a new paradigm for electronics packaging that enables the world’s smallest multi-material electronic systems.

AND MORE: As a member of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, Racz was part of a recorded performance of Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloe that won the Grammy Award for Best Orchestral Performance in January.

ON HER CHILDHOOD
“I’m 100 percent Hungarian — my family’s from Hungary. I was born in France since my parents were refugees of the 1956 uprising. Our family moved to the U.S. when I was in early elementary school. They wound up in the New York area, and two years later, they moved to Massachusetts so my father could help start a chemical company. My father’s invention is a food-grade coating that is made from corn and is used to coat pills that makes them easier to swallow. It’s used to coat microwaveable food products, and it’s the coating used on Reese’s Pieces.”

WAS SCIENCE ALWAYS YOUR PATH?
“There was a microscope at home, and I just kind of had things around that related to science. I almost became a music major. When it came time to apply for colleges I had to decide. I thought it would be easier to be a musician as a hobby than it would be to be a scientist as a hobby.”

HOW DID YOUR ONE’YEAR AT LASERTRON CHANGE YOUR VIEW OF ACADEMIA AS YOUR CHOICE FOR RESEARCH?
“In retrospect, I had some pretty mediocre student internship experiences in industry. I think that is a very common thing. I got this ‘temporary position’ — it was always meant to be temporary — at Lasertron. I figured, whatever it is, I could handle it for a year, and then I’m just going to go into academia. To my surprise, it was really a great experience.”

THE IMPORTANCE OF INTERNSHIPS
“This is something that I have talked people’s ears off about. I am sure that they are tired of listening to me by now. But I really feel it is incredibly important to have a well-defined project. You know, you just say ‘Oh, I’ll hire a student and figure out what to have them do later,’ which is very common. Or hire a student and they are going to watch beakers for me. That’s really not going to cut it. If you don’t care what happens to that student later, that’s a fine thing to do, but if you are really trying to mentor someone that’s really not a very good thing to do.”

Thoughts on Racz
John Dowdle, vice president of engineering for Draper Labs

“From a leadership point of view, she is a very good managing leader of people. Draper is a very technological organization. You have to have somebody that is on par with the technology, which she clearly is, but you also to have somebody who can clearly communicate their vision for the future. It’s very rare, particularly for the kinds of technologies we are in — finding somebody who has the three legs of management, leadership and technology.”