Abigail Rivera Seda, Second year Ph.D. graduate student at Tufts University School of Medicine

I was born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico. I was fortunate that my family did everything they could to allow me to be in a bilingual private school. Since I can remember, I have always been an advocate and wanted my career to impact others positively. Although I didn’t know what that looked like for me, I performed very well in my STEM courses and enjoyed science fairs, science communication, and science clubs. Surprisingly, when I saw the movie “Contagion” – a thriller about a viral pandemic – I became inspired by the woman scientist who developed a vaccine that could prevent individuals from getting sick. I thought, “I want to be her. I want to do what she does”, which inspired me to major in Microbiology.

My current thesis project focuses on characterizing a protein in Clostridium difficile, an important pathogen that affects almost half a million people. It is considered one of the hardiest organisms in the world because it can form a spore that allows it to survive even after being exposed to the vacuum of space!

If you focus only on my educational or career milestones, you could say that my career path has been traditional, but when you look beyond the milestones, I’d say not quite. Before I went to college, I asked my science teacher, “How do medications and vaccines get created?” She mentioned that scientists do research to study and design them. So, I started from there. When I began my major in Microbiology at the Inter-American University of Puerto Rico, I was eager to get into research. I didn’t understand what research or doing research was then, but I knew it was the path to becoming a scientist. I was very bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Fortunately, sharing my interest in research with professors and asking, “How can I start?” landed me my first research opportunity at a Microbial Ecology and Genomics Lab (MEGL). I was in my undergrad lab for almost two years and was excited about the research I was doing. Unfortunately, after a category five hurricane hit the island in 2017, Puerto Ricans were in a complete blackout, and –other than struggling for basic necessities—I worried about what would be of my education. Fortunately, before the hurricane, my family had plans to work and move to Spain. Since I was halfway through college, it was not an option for me, but given the uncertainty and circumstances, I joined my family.

Two weeks after the hurricane hit the island, I was in Spain. Given the cultural shock and differences in the educational system, life seemed quite challenging. I no longer had the same enthusiasm for research; I was focused on surviving. However, I felt lucky to be allowed to enroll at the University of Malaga. During my experience in MEGL, I became interested in understanding the physiological processes in bacteria. For example, how can bacteria degrade/digest other complex biomaterials, serve as probiotics, or cause disease? This curiosity led me to major in Biochemistry with a minor in Biotechnology.

When the time came for me to graduate, I wanted to be involved in research again, and due to the financial stress my family had at the time, I needed to sustain myself. I researched and applied for post-baccalaureate programs on the East Coast in the US and was accepted in the NIH-funded Post-baccalaureate Research and Education Program (PREP) at Tufts University Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences; this program is explicitly an NIH incentive to promote diversity in the biomedical sciences and provide research opportunities for minoritized groups. 

After finishing the one-year program, I am now continuing my graduate school education as a Ph.D. graduate student at Tufts in the Molecular Microbiology program, which, funny enough, is the combination of my two undergrad majors.

So, yes, you could say I followed a traditional career path –private high school, bachelor’s in science, post-baccalaureate, and now a doctorate, with no breaks in between—however, the effort behind that path was more than I could imagine.

Currently, the biggest challenge as a Ph.D. graduate student is learning to think for myself and leading my project despite the failures. It requires a lot of reading, patience, persistence, and realizing that the shortcomings in the project are unlikely because of you. 

One of the first pieces of advice I received during graduate school is that “over 90% of experiments won’t work”. However, I realize it’s an everyday challenge during graduate school since I hope to become an independent scientist by the end. On the other hand, I enjoy the flexibility of leading your project; for example, being able to read about a very cool experiment related to my topic and think, “I’m going to try that out.” I also enjoy the fact that –despite being the leader in your project—science is about collaboration. I have great colleagues willing to provide feedback and brainstorm ideas if I’m ever stuck on a question. 

We are at a time when scientists can be involved in spaces outside of a lab, and becoming an academic professor is not the only (acceptable) option. For a long time, people saw academia as the only pathway or career track to realize you are a scientist. With the advancement of technology, it is becoming more common for scientists to work in industry (e.g., pharmaceuticals, biotechnology companies, clinical labs, manufacturing companies, etc.) or become entrepreneurs.

This also opens opportunities for scientists to go into patent law, work alongside the government to develop regulations and policies for upcoming therapies or technologies, or become consultants for venture capitalists. Being a scientist no longer means being useful only in a lab; having critical thinking skills, curiosity, and the ability to identify gaps and a need in society are also helpful.

Because of all these options, I am unsure of the next steps in my career, but I am open to learning more about these different sectors and seeing the best fit for me.

Looking back on all the milestones, achievements, and experiences that I have had, I would not change anything regarding my career path, which, for me, is also evidence of a lot of personal growth and acceptance. Given my circumstances, it has been a challenging journey, but I find being a Molecular Microbiologist very fulfilling. I am currently studying a pathogen with the hopes that the knowledge that I generate will help other scientists develop therapies to help people who suffer from the disease; I am capable of reading other scientific literature that helps me understand human life and all the different organisms that share our planet; and I have the privileged to continue my career into different job markets and learn from people with a different knowledge and skill set.

If I were to advise anyone interested in becoming a scientist, it would be:  always be your authentic self. Be curious. Ask many questions. Share your goals with people, even if you don’t think they can help you, building a network is important. For example, as an undergrad, I would openly speak to professors about my interests. Additionally, I know representation matters. I was fortunate that my undergraduate institutions were Latino and Hispanic, where I saw professors who were women and people of color, so I never questioned whether people who looked like me could become scientists, which is a privilege. However, being proactive and involved in outreach and institutional or national organizations will expose you to other social groups and backgrounds. 
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For example, when I returned to the US, I learned about SACNAS (Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science). Their mission is to provide resources, opportunities, and incentives to undergraduate and graduate students from minoritized groups to become involved in the sciences. I’ve found that being involved in organizations like these helps me feel fulfilled and supported by people who share similar experiences. So, I hope that you can believe that even though in your current surroundings it doesn’t seem like science is for you or you don’t have a community to support you, you can trust that there are organizations and people out there who believe in you and are ready to help you in your scientific journey.

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Dr. Sandra Sanchez, Post-doc at Tufts University and future faculty at Framingham State University.

I am a Microbiologist. I earned my PhD in Biology from Indiana University Bloomington. I am currently a postdoc at Tufts University in Boston MA. I am extremely happy that I will be starting a faculty position as an Assistant Professor of Biology at Framingham State University. I will be teaching undergraduates and running a small laboratory where undergraduates can get experience in research. 

I work on an organism called Vibrio cholerae which is the bacterium that causes the disease Cholera. This disease is not in many countries that have the technology and money to clean their water. [It] is found in many developing countries but also countries that have natural disasters like earthquakes and hurricanes that might destroy their water filtration sites. I have been studying the connection between motility (how the organism uses its flagellum to move around the environment) and quorum sensing communication (the organism secretes little molecules into the environment so it can communicate with other of its own species). Hopefully if we learn more about how the organism communicates and moves around, we can find ways to stop it from causing disease.

I didn’t grow up knowing that a scientist was an option, but when I was introduced to that world in community college, I remember being in awe of microorganisms. They are these unseen things that are super simple cells and can do so much. They can cause horrible diseases and also are so important for plants and our planet. I just wanted to learn more about them and how they were capable of doing so much when they seemed so small. 

I don’t know if I had a role model growing up. Being an immigrant child, [my life] was a little hectic to have a role model while growing up. Once I was in my 20s, my parents became my role models. They moved countries, which sounds scary if you are doing it alone let alone with three children. They worked so hard when they got to the United States, had multiple jobs while they learned English, and [they] got settled. My father was the first in our family to attend community college; he wanted to show us that education was important, so he went to community college to take English classes and earn an associate degree in business. 

I didn’t know what graduate school was or that research was an option as a career when I was an undergraduate. I was extremely fortunate to have met two fantastic women when I started attending community college. One was my anatomy professor, and the other one was my [general biology] professor. They told me about their career path and how they both had gone on to graduate school, and that is why they have the title of doctor.  They were the ones who guided me to apply for programs that exposed me to research. 

I would suggest you get to know your professors and classmates; have conversations about what they are doing. You might find fields that you weren’t aware of, or opportunities [about which you didn’t know]. If you think you might be interested in a field, try to participate in a program; sometimes it will surprise you. When I first went back to community college, I thought I wanted to be a nurse or a doctor (MD), I applied to an internship program at the LA County Hospital and after a couple of months I realized that this was not my passion, but then I applied to a research program over the winter session and I worked in a microbiology lab and I knew I had found my path. 

I didn’t know this was going to be my path. My parents immigrated to the US when I was 11 years old, and I didn’t know anything about college or being a scientist. I graduated from high school and started to work because I needed money to take care of myself and help my family a little if I could. I was successful, I started as a receptionist and moved up to a sales rep at a software company. I had to travel for my work, and one day I was sitting on a plane and realized that I didn’t like to travel and didn’t really have a passion for my job. I wanted more. So, I started attending evening classes at my local community college. I met other students who were going for nursing, and I thought “why not.” At this college, I met the women that would change my life. I talked about this earlier, but I was taking all my classes for nursing. I took a Microbiology course and that’s when I realized I liked bacteria and science.  With help from my professors, I decided to change my major. 

[My career path] is not what is considered traditional because I didn’t go to school right after high school. I worked for a long time, and then attended a community college before figuring out what I wanted to do for my career. 

When I am teaching, I love the moment that a student gets excited about biology/science. For example, when a student can see under a microscope what a bacterium looks like; or when we are discussing something in class and a student comes up after and says, “my cousin has diabetes and now I understand why and how it happens”.  

In the lab, [there are] times you are the first person ever to try something. So, when that works out, and you know something no one else knows, it’s exciting. Mostly these are small steps, but it can help answer questions that can help us understand big concepts. 

I have people ask me medical questions because they know I am a Dr., but they think PhD is the same as a medical doctor. I also have people think that scientists are like what they see in movies, so they think I’m surrounded by expensive and weird machines. 

Science doesn’t always work the way you want, which can be great but can be frustrating. As a scientist, you get to be the first to learn something new but that comes with trials and errors as you are figuring out an experiment. 

There are a lot of options: you can work for the government, or you can work for a company that makes vaccines or medicine. You can become a professor, which is what I want to do. You can also be a writer or a science journalist. There are many options. 

​[The salary range for this field of work is] very varied. If you are a professor at a small liberal arts college or State University, it can start at $60,000 up to $100,000. If you are a professor at a [prominent] research university, such as Yale or Harvard, that mostly starts with salaries over $110,000. If you instead go into industry and work for a company performing research, then you start [at a salary] of $120,000 and can earn up to $160,000.

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Dr. Nandadevi Cortes-Rodriguez, Assistant Professor in Biology, Ithaca College

I am particularly interested in the role that past or present geographic barriers play in the evolutionary history of species, emphasizing their phylogeography, genomics and conservation. Recently I have incorporated geographic variation in songs to understand the behavior of species that [are] separated by geographical barriers.

I grew up in Mexico and I was very fortunate and privileged in that my dad was a high school professor and wanted his daughters to have a good education. He was also a mountain climber, and we spent a lot of time around nature, hiking, climbing, and camping. Those experiences allowed us to enjoy the world outside the busy city. He enrolled us in the private school he was working at the time, it was a bilingual school where my sister and I learned English [when] we were 5 years old. Learning English at [an early age] opened many doors when I was in college because I was able to easily read novel research papers and attend conferences that were abroad. It was at a conference where I met my former PhD advisor who invited me to perform laboratory work for my master’s at his lab at UMBC (University of Maryland, Baltimore County), where I was able to attend their lab meetings and seminars.

I think, like many people, I wanted to study everything. For as long as I remember I wanted to study physics, I was good at math, and I read a book on “relativity for kids” and the idea of studying the Theory of Relativity was my goal during middle school and high school. I really liked physics and math; however, things changed when I was in my last year of high school, and I think it was my AP biology that shook my world. There was something about genetics research that fascinated me and from that moment forward I decided I was going to be a biologist. I applied to college to be a biology major. It was the combination of being outside in the field collecting specimens and inside in the lab.

I have always been very shy. I was a good student, but I was one of the kids who would sit in the classroom and do the work quietly. However, I would suggest they talk to their advisor from school (high school or college) and ask about their research. Usually, professors can give them an idea of what brought them to their research and sometimes they can invite you to their lab. Even though I was shy, I reached out to a professor, and she let me work in her genetics lab, working with Fruit flies. However, I did not really like being in that lab. I met with the professor and told her I would be leaving the lab. I finished my work and stopped working there. I reached out to another professor who was setting up her lab in ornithology population genetics research. She had an opening and offered it to me, and I felt like that was the place I belonged. I started working with hummingbird DNA and evolutionary relationships between different populations in Mexico and Central America and she became my undergraduate and master's thesis adviser. My advice would be to reach out and not stay in a lab where you are not enjoying the research or the professor's personality.

I had a very traditional pathway into Academia; however, I did take a “gap year” where I went to France to teach Spanish to French high school students. That experience made me realize I liked teaching and got a job teaching at a middle school when I came back to Mexico. I completed a master's, PhD, and postdoctoral research before applying to be an Assistant Professor. This year I will be applying for tenure so I can become an Associate Professor.
Even though my line of work, biology, is mostly female lead, it doesn’t mean that there aren’t gender inequalities. When it comes to doing field research, many advisors prefer taking males instead of females. One advice I would give is to not be discouraged by what some male professors may say about female students doing fieldwork. I remember it took me a couple of years and asking many times to be included in some of the field trips that were organized by my lab back in college. Once I got the opportunity, I made the most of it, even though I wasn’t very experienced in doing fieldwork I worked hard and proved that I was good at it. My advice would be to not give up and be persistent if that is something you would like to do, in the end, it is better to have tried and not like it than never to try because of what others think.

When I was a student and a postdoc at the Smithsonian, my favorite part was holding a pipette and doing molecular work; however, now my favorite part is interacting with students, whether [it] is teaching or mentoring students in my research lab. I enjoy it when they can ask questions and answer them with their research. I try to make a safe space and community for my lab students, where they can be who they are and express what they have in their minds. I always make them feel welcome, enjoy their success, and try giving them advice when they come to me for help. Many things are rough about being a professor, but the students I have had have made my time at the College a wonderful experience.

I think one of my role models was Marie Curie, she was not only a woman in science but got two Nobel prizes. My other role model was my cousin who went to Med School in Mexico but had the opportunity to study cancer research in Houston, TX. One time, my family accompanied my dad to run the Houston marathon and we met my cousin to have pizza. I was 12 at the time and I remember thinking, this is what I want to do when I grow up, I want to study abroad, I was fascinated by the stories and working in another country became my main goal. I didn’t know what I was going to study, but I remembered I wanted to have the experience of studying abroad.

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​Sometimes I wish I could say that I’ve always wanted to be an engineer. That would’ve saved me from endless hours (or days or weeks) of second-guessing my abilities. But it wouldn’t have helped me become the curious, self-determined, Latina in STEM that I am today. 
 
I have always loved being a student. And as a kid I didn’t really think about my future. When I would be asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, my go-to answer was a lawyer. As a child of immigrants, I was familiar with the profession by name only but that was about it. As I graduated from elementary, to middle school, to high school I didn’t give that question much thought. That is until I saw my older brother and later my classmates apply to college. But even then, I didn’t understand what college would offer - all I heard was that I could continue being a student and that was enough for me.
 
Luckily, I was not a bad student and had parents that emphasized the importance of a college education. So, I applied to the only two universities that I could see myself at, the University of Houston (UH), where my brother was studying, and the University of Texas at Austin (UT) where most of my classmates were applying to. When it came to choosing a major for the application, I chose undeclared. I couldn’t decide on what I would want to study, everything seemed interesting and new and exciting but also very vague and scary and different. How could I, a seventeen-year-old with little knowledge of the world outside of my small hometown, make such a big decision?
 
A couple of months later I found myself at UT’s orientation. Getting there was a big discussion with my family, but after an invitation to explore the campus and meet with representatives of the university we decided that UT would provide me with the resources like career counselors, student mentors, and tutoring to make that decision. As an undeclared student my goal was to successfully transfer into a major that I was genuinely interested in and that would lead to a stable career. 
 
My first fall semester was rough. The classes were hard, I felt homesick, confused, and in over my head. I also felt very frustrated with myself because I still didn’t have a clear answer to that question, “What do I want to be when I grow up?” I was tired of being so indecisive. So that winter break I decided to transfer into linguistics because I liked words and I really wanted to justify studying Latin after taking an introduction class into classical mythology. Shortly after starting the spring semester, I was able to successfully transfer into the linguistics department.
 
A couple of weeks later, I felt like I made a mistake.  
 
But part of growing up is making them and learning from them. So, this time, I asked questions. I signed up for almost every single transfer information session (except for anything medical because of several different reasons), I talked to my academic advisor, I talked to students about their majors and the classes they were taking, I attended pre-law student organization meetings (just in case), I went to office hours, went on field trips, did a lot of tutoring, and I googled endlessly about majors and jobs. And most importantly I talked to my career counselor who introduced to me the different types of careers paths that different kinds of majors provided. By the end of the semester, I realized architectural engineering checked all of my boxes: challenging, useful, and stable. 
 
My second fall semester was better. I was able to transfer into the engineering school to study architectural engineering. The more and more I learned about the different building systems, the equations that make our lives easier, and the people that make it happen, the more I realized I made the right decision. Like I learned my freshman year, I had to explore and learn about all of my options so I joined different student chapters of professional organizations like the Structural Engineers Association of Texas (SEAoT) which introduced me to forensic civil engineering. I attended Women in Engineering Program (WEP) events where I met and learned from women studying and working in engineering.
 
By the time I graduated, I had participated in undergraduate research, competed in an international concrete competition, 3-D printed a model of a high-rise building, and found the answer to that ever present question. I want to design and construct a strong and healthy built environment. Currently I work as a forensic civil engineer where I investigate building and road failures and will be going back to school  to earn a master’s in civil engineering. I am still at the beginning of my STEM journey, but like the saying goes, getting started is the hardest part.