What I Do I am a professor in Mechanical Engineering at Oklahoma State University doing research on smart soft materials, specifically Liquid Crystal Elastomers. We do experiments and simulations to understand these materials.
Why Engineering? I have always enjoyed science in class so I went to Engineering School in France. I then picked Mechanical Engineering because I was interested in the behavior of materials.
School Days I went to school for my B.Sc., M.S., and Ph.D. in France, at University of Technology of Compiegne and Ecole Polytechnique. I then did two postdocs, at University of California Berkeley and Johns Hopkins University.
My Day At Work My work is divided into teaching, mentoring students to help them make progress in their research projects, writing papers, helping the department, and finding funding for the research projects we want to start.
Best Part I like being able to understand a system and to use different tools along the way: performing measurements during experiments or building a simulation.
Proud Moments I was very proud of starting a project on the biomechanics of pregnant women. A lot of pregnant women fall during their pregnancy (one in four) and we are not sure why this happens. We started a project to understand how the uneven gain in weight during pregnancy is causing these falls.
My Family I am married, my husband is also French and also a Mechanical Engineer. I have two daughters, 5 years old and 1.5 years old, and two cats named Laplace and Fourier!
Want to be an Engineer? Go for it! It is more impressive from the outside than it actually is on the inside. And once you are in, take advantage of all the support you can get.