Deb Chachra (born 1971) is a materials scientist and a professor at Olin College.[2][3] She specialises in biological materials and infrastructure. She is interested in innovations in engineering education and was one of the founding members of the materials faculty at Olin.
Deb Chachra | |
---|---|
![]() | |
Born | 1971 (age 52–53) |
Alma mater | University of Toronto (BS, MA, PhD) |
Awards | NSF Career Award (2009) |
Scientific career | |
Institutions | Olin College Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
Thesis | The influence of lifelong exposure to environmental fluoride on bone quality in humans (2001) |
Doctoral advisor | Marc Grynpas[1] |
Website | debcha |
Chachra is the author of How Infrastructure Works, a non-fiction book published in 2023.[4]
Education and early career
editChachra grew up in Scarborough, Ontario.[5] Her parents were immigrants from New Delhi, India.[6] She wanted to be an astronaut.[7] She studied engineering at the University of Toronto where she completed her Bachelor of Science, Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy degrees.[2] Her PhD on the influence of fluoride on bone quality was supervised by Marc Grynpas[1] in the Department of Materials at The University of Toronto. She studied Colletes bees, which create a cellophane-like substance to wrap their eggs in tunnels.[clarification needed][8] The bees first create fibres of silk, followed by layers of plastics.[8]
Career and research
editAfter her PhD, Chachra joined Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a postdoctoral researcher.[when?] She worked in Lorna Gibson's lab on how bone responds to ageing.[9] She looked at the shelf-life of bioprosthetic heart valves.[10]
Chachra has contributed to The Atlantic and the comic Bitch Planet.[11][12][13] She is a trustee of the Awesome Foundation.[14] Her newsletter Metafoundry was described by Wired magazine as being 'like being plugged Oculus-style into her brain while she meditates on science and culture'.[15] She appeared on the PBS show If You Build It.[16] She joined Olin College after her postdoc, working on fluoride and mineralised tissues.[17][18] She was one of their founding faculty – the first class graduated in 2006.[19]
Engineering education research
editChachra studies the experience of student engineers.[20] She does not like to be referred to as a "maker" because she believes the world is associated with a male dominated culture.[21] She is part of Olin College's Collaboratory.[22] She writes a column for American Society for Engineering Education's magazine Prism called Reinvention.[23] At Olin College she is looking at how women and minority students engage with engineering education, designing interventions to improve retention and diversity.[24] She works with engineers all over the world on the development of new education programs.[25][26] She has investigated group- and project-based learning in engineering education.[27] She explored ways to develop a bioengineering program with a small footprint.[28] In 2013 she studied gender and computing, developing a "Gender and Engineering Exploration Kit".[29] Chachra has challenged academic publishers to combat bias in the industry.[20] She has written editorials for Nature about the experience of women engineers.[30] She continues to return the University of Toronto, talking about the design of engineering education.[31]
Awards and honors
editChachra received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award to work on engineering education.[24][32] In 2009 she was awarded the American Society for Engineering Education William Elgin Wickenden Award.[33]
References
edit- ^ a b Chachra, Debbie (2001). The influence of lifelong exposure to environmental fluoride on bone quality in humans. utoronto.ca (PhD thesis). University of Toronto. hdl:1807/16482. OCLC 51039818.
- ^ a b "Faculty Profile for Debbie Chachra, Ph.D. - Olin College". www.olin.edu.
- ^ Ohland, Matthew W.; Sheppard, Sheri D.; Lichtenstein, Gary; Eris, Ozgur; Chachra, Debbie; Layton, Richard A. (2008). "Persistence, Engagement, and Migration in Engineering Programs". Journal of Engineering Education. 97 (3): 259–278. doi:10.1002/j.2168-9830.2008.tb00978.x. ISSN 1069-4730. S2CID 110595834.
- ^ Newitz, Annalee (20 October 2023). "A passionate argument for the necessity of functioning infrastructure". The Washington Post. Retrieved 7 November 2023.
- ^ "Debbie Chachra's letter to her teenage self". Science Club for Girls. 2010-03-11. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
- ^ "Care at Scale". Comment Magazine. August 5, 2021.
- ^ "ASEE PRISM - Summer- Reinvention". www.prism-magazine.org. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
- ^ a b Eveleth, Rose (2001). "Can Bees Make Tupperware?". scientificamerican.com. Scientific American. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
- ^ "The Gibson Group | People". lornagibson.org. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
- ^ Julien, Maryse; Létouneau, Dany R.; Marois, Yves; Cardou, Alain; King, Martin W.; Guidoin, Robert; Chachra, Debbie; Lee, J. Michael (1997). "Shelf-life of bioprosthetic heart valves: a structural and mechanical study". Biomaterials. 18 (8): 605–612. doi:10.1016/S0142-9612(96)00155-X. ISSN 0142-9612. PMID 9134160.
- ^ Chachra, Debbie. "Debbie Chachra". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
- ^ DeConnick, Kelly Sue (2016-01-06). Bitch Planet #6. Image Comics.
- ^ "Debbie Chachra | Milkfed Criminal Masterminds". milkfed.us. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
- ^ "Debbie Chachra - Speakerpedia, Discover & Follow a World of Compelling Voices". speakerpedia.com. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
- ^ "The Blissfully Slow World of Internet Newsletters". WIRED. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
- ^ If You Build It | Webisode | America ReFramed, retrieved 2018-11-08
- ^ Chachra, Debbie; Vieira, Anya P. G. F.; Grynpas, Marc D. (2008). "Fluoride and Mineralized Tissues". Critical Reviews in Biomedical Engineering. 36 (2–3): 183–233. doi:10.1615/CritRevBiomedEng.v36.i2-3.40. ISSN 0278-940X. PMID 19740071.
- ^ "Olin College of Engineering - Faculty". olin.smartcatalogiq.com. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
- ^ "Debbie Chachra's schedule for SCHED* SXSW 2011". Retrieved 2018-11-08.
- ^ a b "Discover the Future of Research : 2018 : June : 25 | Wiley". hub.wiley.com. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
- ^ Chachra, Debbie (2015-01-23). "Why I Am Not a Maker". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
- ^ "Collaboratory | Olin College of Engineering". www.olin.edu. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
- ^ "Reinvention". www.asee-prism.org. 8 October 2017. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
- ^ a b "NSF Award Search: Award#0953698 - CAREER: Exploring the Relationship Between Self-Efficacy and Project-Based Learning Among Engineering Students". www.nsf.gov. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
- ^ "Engineering Seminar: Debbie Chachra, Lessons Learned: On Starting a New Engineering School". umb.edu. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
- ^ Media, U of T. "Media Room & Blue Book – University of Toronto". media.utoronto.ca. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
- ^ Minerick, Lorelle A Meadows, Denise Sekaquaptewa, Marie C Paretti, Alice L. Pawley, Shawn S. Jordan, Debbie Chachra, Adrienne (2015-06-14). "Interactive Panel: Improving the Experiences of Marginalized Students on Engineering Design Teams". ISSN 2153-5965.
{{cite journal}}
: Cite journal requires|journal=
(help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ "Developing a small-footprint bioengineering program" (PDF). ASEE. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
- ^ Stein, Lynn Andrea; Chachra, Debbie; Zastavker, Yevgeniya V.; Lynch, Caitrin; Sarang-Sieminski, Alisha (2013). "An interactive exploration of gender and computing". Proceeding of the 44th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education. Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 205–206. doi:10.1145/2445196.2445260. ISBN 9781450318686. S2CID 1916486.
- ^ Chachra, Debbie (2017). "To reduce gender biases, acknowledge them". Nature. 548 (7668): 373. Bibcode:2017Natur.548..373C. doi:10.1038/548373a. ISSN 0028-0836. PMID 28836614.
- ^ Media, U of T. "Media Room & Blue Book – University of Toronto". media.utoronto.ca. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
- ^ "NSF Award Search: Award#1156832 - REU Site: Engineering Education Research: Understanding and Improving Student Experiences". www.nsf.gov. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
- ^ "ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition" (PDF). Retrieved 2018-11-08.
External links
edit- "Dean's Lecture Series: Dr. Debbie Chachra - February 16, 2022 | UMD iSchool". YouTube. UMD INFO College.
- "Debbie Chachra – How Infrastructure Works | The Conference 2023". YouTube. The Conference / Media Evolution. September 22, 2023.