As a young girl, Samantha Smith wasn’t thinking about a career in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM). She didn’t have a female role model who was guiding her in that direction. But that changed when she started taking classes at Collin College from Professor Tripat Baweja, now director of engineering technical programs.

Fast forward a few years, and Smith is happily entrenched in the STEM field as a mechanical engineer at Raytheon. She is working on a product that protects service men and women while completing her Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering degree at The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD).

打好基础

Learning about engineering from Baweja inspired Smith to serve as a public relations officer for the college’s Society of Women Engineers chapter. In addition, she joined the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and volunteered at the Collin College all girls and co-ed robotics camps, sharing her love of science with middle school and high school students.

“It is important that women go into engineering because they have different perspectives than men,” Smith said. “With more people with different perspectives, we can go further because we all bring new and different ideas.”

Smith graduated with an associate degree from Collin College, summa cum laude, in 2017. She transferred to UTD and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering, summa cum laude, in May 2020.

“我可以把我在曼联的成功归功于皇冠体育。 Collin gave me the foundation of how to study and learn in science classes like chemistry and engineering,” Smith said. “我知道如何深入钻研课本和笔记，知道该问哪些问题。 I took all the theory I learned at Collin and applied it in my classes and labs and in the Nano-Bio Lab at UTD.”

Smith led a project in which she was the only undergraduate and only female volunteering in the Nano-Bio Lab. During her one and a half years at the lab, she helped create a stable printhead for a 3D printer to fabricate flexible circuits. In the summer of 2018, she was one of five students selected for a summer National Science 基金会 (NSF) optics lab project at the University of Texas at Austin. The group was working on unique metal compounds that exhibit photoluminescence (emit light). Smith’s science knowledge from Collin College proved invaluable.

“那时，我只在皇冠体育大学的物理II课上学过光学。 At Collin, we talked about how the focus would change depending on the quality of the materials of the metal monolayer. 单层薄膜非常薄，只有几个原子那么厚。 If you put tape on a pencil mark, the amount left on the tape when it is removed is comparable to a monolayer of metal. It was so thin we could bend it and use it for circuitry,” Smith explained.

When Smith returned to the Nano-Bio Lab in the fall, she was part of a team that built a 3D printer that used a modified liquid polymer that converts to ceramic when it is sintered (extreme heat). She was awarded the Johnson School Undergraduate Research Award and published a 纸 with her colleagues about the project. Smith went on to complete another NSF internship with a computation mechanics lab at UTD where she compiled biomechanical data and performed simulations showing how bone reacts to forces. The data included nano-level changes in regard to tension, compression, and shear. For Smith’s senior design project, sponsored by UT Southwestern, she provided the mechanical components for a mannikin which served as a bleeding control trainer with biofeedback and CPR capability.

在野外工作

Last summer, Smith completed an internship supporting the radiofrequency sensors and electronics design team at Raytheon. 她在实习结束前就被录用了。

“I love what I do, how much I am learning, and being able to apply what I learned in college. 我学到的东西现在都活过来了，我真的因此而充实了。 我从我的团队那里得到了很多支持，他们尊重我。 My colleagues ask for my opinion even though they’ve been working there for 20 years,” she said.

Looking back, Smith said she realizes that women may be intimidated by the idea of pursuing STEM careers. 她建议他们迈出这一步，投入其中。

史密斯说：“我鼓励女性进入STEM领域，因为这真的很有回报。” “You get to see your limits and how you can change the world through innovation and problem solving. What I am doing today is going to make someone’s life better and may even save someone’s life.”