Deb Chachra
American engineer and materials scientist
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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.
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Deb Chachra | |
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| Born | 1971 (age 54–55) |
| 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
Chachra 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.[3] 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 protect their eggs within tunnels.[8] The bees first create fibres of silk, followed by layers of plastics.[8]
Career and research
After 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, Untapped,[11] MIT Technology Review,[12] and the comic Bitch Planet.[13][14][15]
She is a trustee of the Awesome Foundation.[16] 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'.[17] She appeared on the PBS show If You Build It.[18] She joined Olin College after her postdoc, working on fluoride and mineralised tissues.[19][20] She was one of their founding faculty – the first class graduated in 2006.[21]
Engineering education research
Chachra studies the experience of student engineers.[22] She does not like to be referred to as a "maker" because she believes the world is associated with a male dominated culture.[23] She is part of Olin College's Collaboratory.[24] She writes a column for American Society for Engineering Education's magazine Prism called Reinvention.[25] At Olin College she is looking at how women and minority students engage with engineering education, designing interventions to improve retention and diversity.[26] She works with engineers all over the world on the development of new education programs.[27][28] She has investigated group- and project-based learning in engineering education.[29] She explored ways to develop a bioengineering program with a small footprint.[30] In 2013 she studied gender and computing, developing a "Gender and Engineering Exploration Kit".[31] Chachra has challenged academic publishers to combat bias in the industry.[22] She has written editorials for Nature about the experience of women engineers.[32] She continues to return the University of Toronto, talking about the design of engineering education.[33]
Awards and honors
Chachra received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award to work on engineering education.[26][34] In 2009 she was awarded the American Society for Engineering Education William Elgin Wickenden Award.[35]
