Debbie Chachra
Debbie 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.
Debbie Chachra | |
---|---|
Born | 1971 (age 48–49) |
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] |
Influences | Lorna Gibson |
Website | debcha |
Education and early career
Chachra grew up in Scarborough, Toronto.[4] She wanted to be an astronaut.[5] 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 Toronto. She studied Colletes bees, which create a cellophane-like substance to wrap their eggs in tunnels.[6] The bees first create fibres of silk, followed by layers of plastics.[6]
Career and research
After her PhD, Chachra joined Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a postdoctoral researcher. She worked in Lorna Gibson's lab on how bone responds to ageing.[7] She looked at the shelf-life of bioprosthetic heart valves.[8]
Chachra has contributed to The Atlantic and the comic Bitch Planet.[9][10][11] She is a trustee of the Awesome Foundation.[12] 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'.[13] She appeared on the PBS show If You Build It.[14] She joined Olin College after her postdoc, working on fluoride and mineralised tissues.[15][16] She was one of their founding faculty - the first class graduated in 2006.[17]
Engineering education research
Chachra studies the experience of student engineers.[18] She does not like to be referred to as a "maker" because she believes the world is associated with a male dominated culture.[19] She is part of Olin College's Collaboratory.[20] She writes a column for American Society for Engineering Education's magazine Prism called Reinvention.[21] At Olin College she is looking at how women and minority students engage with engineering education, designing interventions to improve retention and diversity.[22] She works with engineers all over the world on the development of new education programs.[23][24] She has investigated group- and project-based learning in engineering education.[25] She explored ways to develop a bioengineering program with a small footprint.[26] In 2013 she studied gender and computing, developing a "Gender and Engineering Exploration Kit".[27] Chachra has challenged academic publishers to combat bias in the industry.[18] She has written editorials for Nature about the experience of women engineers.[28] She continues to return the University of Toronto, talking about the design of engineering education.[29]
Awards and honors
Chachra received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award to work on engineering education.[22][30] In 2009 she was awarded the American Society for Engineering Education William Elgin Wickenden Award.[31]
References
- 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.
- "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.
- "Debbie Chachra's letter to her teenage self". Science Club for Girls. 2010-03-11. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
- "ASEE PRISM - Summer- Reinvention". www.prism-magazine.org. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
- 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.
- "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. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
- "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 requires
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(help) - "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: unpacking the student experience". SIGCSE '13 Proceeding of the 44th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education. Association for Computing Machinery: 205–206. doi:10.1145/2445196.2445260. ISBN 9781450318686.
- Chachra, Debbie (2017). "To reduce gender biases, acknowledge them". Nature. 548 (7668): 373. 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.