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From her commencement speech, June 2003:
I am very honored to be here today to celebrate your success and to look forward to the future with my fellow alumni. I am especially humbled to be here in front of my mentors and professors who had such a great impact on my career.
So congratulations to the CCS Class of 2003. I want to emphasize to you and convey to your families that you are not an ordinary group of students. Today you are receiving degrees in ?creative studies?.
Almost 12 years ago I was sitting where you are today, but at the time I don?t think that I realized how much this unique program would pave the way to having what I consider the ?Best Job in the World?.
From the day we stepped on this campus we were given almost complete responsibility to pick our own classes, design our own field of expertise and decide who and what we wanted to be. We were given guidance, a lot of latitude, encouraged to make seemingly unconnectable connections, be creative and take chances.
I think this is the template for a successful and fulfilling career.
I remember one way we were encouraged to take chances was we could add or drop classes up to the week before finals; so that we could sign up for what we thought sounded interesting and after a few weeks pick what really was. But I always had this fear that I would forget to drop a class. Turns out years later when I was looking at my transcript, I did somehow forget to drop a class and I graduate with an incomplete, which I thought was not possible. Anyway, I hope that in admitting this, they won?t require me to make it up.
I also remember looking through the catalog and finding what I thought was the most interesting class at UCSB. It was a graduate protein chemistry class. So I went to the Professor and he said ?we don?t let undergraduates take this class ? besides, you don?t have the prerequisites. ?But the Provost of CCS called him and said, ?we don?t discourage our students from pursuing what they are interested in, give her a chance?. It was in that class that I really fell in love with large molecules and proteins, and set the course for my research today.
After graduating, I decided to do a Ph.D. in something I knew very little about ? inorganic chemistry ? but at the same time, combined my interest in proteins. Working with my mentors, we studied the dynamic processes of how abalones make their shells. They are protein-inorganic composite structures with amazing structure and regularity. They all self-assemble, using environmentally benign conditions.
After receiving my Ph.D., I wanted to learn something new, so I went to study as a Postdoc with an amazing mentor in Electrical Engineering. We worked on combining the process of how shells are made to think about how to apply this to electronic materials.
Leaving and starting my own faculty position, I wanted to combine everything I had learned up to that point, so I decided that I was going to genetically engineer protein-based viruses to grow and assemble electronic materials to form next-next-generation electronic computers. I wrote a grant proposal, sent it off, and it was evaluated by 2 people from my field, and the two reviews came back:
1: Great idea, very creative. Probably very challenging, but she can probably do it (I think that was probably from one of my mentors).
2: The second came back:? is she crazy??
Fortunately, the Grant Officer gave me a chance, and that seemingly crazy idea has led to millions of additional dollars in grant funding, 11 patents, numerous papers, over 20 Ph.D. student projects, starting my own company, a faculty position at MIT, and 500, 00 Frequent Flyer miles.
Most importantly, I have the career I have always dreamed of.
So my advice is to follow your passion. Find that idea or topic that you?re so excited about, that you wake up in the middle of the night and wish it was morning so that you can try it out. Or that when you e-mail a colleague in the middle of the night to bounce an idea off of them, they e-mail you right back, because they?re also up, passionately pursuing an idea.
Then convince someone to pay you to pursue it.
That?s what my job is like, running my lab and teaching. Although I don?t tell MIT this, I would probably do my job for free. Part of what I love is being able to give back to my students in teaching and mentoring. I have found that as more time passes, the less free time I have in a day. But it is important to be generous with your time, because it completes the cycle.
So sitting here today, receiving your degrees in CCS, you are ahead of your peers, because you have already begun to design your own future and create your own path.
In closing, my advice to you, based on my 12 years experience is:
? Follow your passion
? Be willing to admit you know very little about a topic, but be willing to learn and make new connections
? Be generous with your time
? Stay creative.
So CONGRATULATIONS, good luck as you begin your new journey. I look forward to reading about your continued successes.
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