Women Engineers: Many Paths to a Rewarding Life

Ashmita Randhawa ’08
Undergraduate researcher

“BU offered me a scholarship that would allow me to get into research right away.”

B.S. student in Biomedical Engineering.

I decided on biomedical engineering because I flipped through my older sister’s engineering books and saw all the symbols and equations and thought, “This looks really cool.” And, I love biology, absolutely adore it. You can model the blood in your body as a circuit -- how cool is that?

I came here from India for college. I applied to about 14 schools, just to be safe. BU offered me a scholarship that would allow me to get into research right away. The second semester of freshman year, I started research in Professor Charles Cantor’s lab, and worked there for two years. I couldn’t have asked for anything better as a first experience in research at BU.

I’m not going to say it’s not hard. But it’s hard for everyone, across the board. It’s fun, there are always new things, new technologies. You have to think outside the box.

I got in to the Society of Women Engineers because I lived on an engineering floor and my resident advisor was on the executive board. I became the publicity coordinator, then got nominated and have been co-president since sophomore year.

We hold a professional night every year to expose students to industry in a relaxed setting and have a panel discussion. Women from area industries come in. Last year this included Microsoft, MathWorks and Mitre. They could talk about what it’s like to be a woman in engineering. It’s not as hard to do as people think. You have to prove yourself, but everyone has to do that.

I just returned from a summer internship at Proctor & Gamble in Belgium. It was a great way to learn how a company works. I worked on two projects, one part was more technical –I got to play with the biochemistry of detergents, and the other was an application of that knowledge to consumers.

In working on the detergent, I made sure it was creating the right amount of softness for consumers and would work at all different water hardness levels. It was very interesting, and different from what I’m used to with biomedical engineering.

In applying this to consumers, I was coming up with demonstrations and ways to communicate the softness of the product, that will be used in commercials. The first day I was there, I was told to come to a brainstorming session and was told that everything I’d try would not work. The exciting thing was, I did get my ideas to work by thinking just a little differently.

The internship program itself was amazing. There were students from all over Europe, Egypt, Indonesia and international students from the US. It was great being able to interact with people from different cultures. The apartment style-hotel we all were put up in by the company had the tiniest stoves, but all of us made attempts at cooking food from the country we were from. Can you imagine cooking Indian food for 15 or 20 people on two tiny circular stoves? But it was done!”

After I graduate, my only indecision right now is about whether to go into industry first then grad school or vice versa.

You can think of any problem in anyway. If I ever change my mind and want to go to law school, I could do it. It’s a good training for life.