Opening Doors: Rhonda Harrison (ENG’98,’04, GRS’04)

Bostonia: How did you first develop an interest in STEM?

Harrison: I was a “computing kid” more than a general technology or biology kid. My dad was a software engineer; we had personal computers at home before that was widespread. Sometimes my dad would say, “Come help me with something,” and I would read off strings of hexadecimal code for him to type in and process. I would actually fall asleep to the sound of 132-column papers coming through on the computers with text on them. I went to computer camp as a kid and eventually became a camp counselor. 

But it wasn’t until I attended an event in high school that I saw myself being a scientist. I was pulled out for a presentation with some other kids who were promising in STEM. The presentation was just for girls, and it was about careers in science and tech and featured these women who were engineers and scientists talking about their jobs and doing cool things. That was a pivotal event for me in my science herstory. I had never really pictured what a career in science could look like until that day. So, I continued in computing in college and then discovered biology and computing.

Bostonia: You’ve had a hand in some really exciting projects, particularly in the early days of bioinformatics. Can you talk about some of those career highlights and the things you got to work on?

Harrison: My time at the Waksman Institute at Rutgers was really inspiring and amazing. I had the opportunity to create the first fruit fly database: in the sciences, there are about 8 to 10 model organisms that scientists in any field study more than others, [such as fruit flies]. I was part of the fruit fly community and developed the first Drosophila melanogaster gene database. 

My experience at Rutgers made me realize that I wanted to do more in academia. That’s when Temple Smith easily lured me to BU for what was meant to be a PhD program [in bioinformatics], but didn’t have a permanent home by the time I was finishing my coursework. So, I left with my master’s [in biomedical engineering] and crossed over to MIT to work at the Whitehead Institute as a staff programmer. That was amazing. That’s where I got to work with Todd Golub, one of the early pioneers of “multi-omics” research. We were doing precision medicine, where we were using AI to look at cancer cells to be able to tell whether they were acute myeloid or acute lymphoblastic leukemia cells in order to help doctors prescribe the appropriate medications. I helped develop a database for that. 

Then I got the call from BU. They said, “The bioinformatics program has a home, and we’d love to have you back as a student.” So, I returned to BU as a PhD candidate. 

As a postdoc, I worked with George Church at Harvard Medical School on the ENCODE project. It was the first ENCODE pilot project to try to determine what biomarkers in the human genome can be used to cure diseases. I developed gene panel design and data management protocols and workflows for that. Then I left academia and started to build my business skills.

Bostonia: You recently launched a diversity and inclusion outreach company. What’s your hope for that initiative?

Harrison: I had a sort of epiphany a while back. I realized I wasn’t role modeling for the people who would benefit from seeing my face and seeing my gender and skin color. I thought, well, how do I help humanity by being a role model and fostering diversity? I decided that I was going to hit the road and present to schools and such about my scientific history—or even the history of the genome project [Human Genome Project] and the women who worked on that. In the science community, we do all of this work and put our names in an author list [when we publish], but you can’t necessarily tell someone’s race or gender or anything else from just a name. So, there isn’t always role modeling happening in that regard either. My brand, RhondaHarrison.com, is my attempt to foster diversity in STEM workplaces and inspire students with my and others’ journeys. I hope to do for young people what I had done for me some 40 years ago, when someone came to me and said, “Hey, this is what a scientist looks like, and you can be one, too.”

Bostonia: Why is it so important to have diverse role models?

There’s a lot of passive learning that happens when you’re young, when your synapses are still forming and you’re taking in information. As you’re going through your day, your career, your life, that learning can be hindered by not seeing diversity, and instead being indoctrinated by what you see around you or the media you consume. [Having diverse role models] broadens people’s perspectives and helps youth imagine themselves having vibrant and productive professional lives. That’s not just exclusive to kids. I think it’s really important for adults, too, to see diversity and imagine things they couldn’t before, or just to see people who don’t look like them having similar journeys. That’s uplifting for humanity.