On February 12, 2016, Prof. Trisha Andrew gave her diversity talk on “Entering Academia in an Interdisciplinary Field” where she spoke to students about her personal experiences in academia. Prof. Andrew received her BSc in Chemistry and Electrical Engineering from the University of Washington and went on to get her PhD in Chemistry from MIT. She then went on to do a\u00a0postdoc in another lab at MIT. \u00a0She is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she’s held this position since 2012.\u00a0Her diversity talk first described her journey into academia and followed with a Q&A session with the audience.<\/p>\n
“I wanted to be a [medical] doctor like every other good Indian girl”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Trisha\u00a0began her undergraduate research experience gassing fruit flies and collecting their ovaries. She then did a work study program where she ended up washing dishes in a chemistry lab, and eventually joined the chemistry lab of Natia Frank, where she began her interest in devices.<\/p>\n
She did her graduate research with\u00a0Tim Swager’s group at MIT, where she focused on designing and synthesizing organic chromophores for explosives detection, as well as a myriad of other projects. During her studies, she ended up helping start a company that eventually got bought out and the technology licensed. She then went on to do a post doc in the lab of Vladimir Bulovic, where she worked on solid state device physics.<\/p>\n
During her postdoctoral training, Trisha was named one of five recipients of the 2011 L’Oreal USA Fellowships for Women in Science<\/a>.\u00a0Receiving this honor involved a ceremony at the US Senate. She described the excitement of bringing her parents to the Senate for this ceremony, 4 months after they had received US citizenship. Unlike other fellowships, the money is entirely the fellow’s. During her post-doc, she used her fellowship to purchase instrumentation, which she now has in her lab at UW-Madison.<\/p>\n