From an early age, Arielle Drummond's stepfather let her tag along and help in his workshop. He was a maintenance worker for the Northern New Jersey Port Authority with a penchant for do-it-yourself projects. In middle school, Drummond found herself bored with finger painting, arithmetic, and tetherball--but at home, working on carburetors and small engines, she had fun.

Some years later, she found herself in a hotel ballroom in Baltimore, Md., and the room was rapidly filling with distinguished academics from across the country. Despite the fact that she spent her time confidently and competently finishing a PhD in biomedical engineering from Carnegie Mellon and working on a team developing and improving artificial heart devices for infants, public speaking made her exceedingly nervous. Nevertheless, she had to give an acceptance speech for receiving the 2008 Black Engineer of the Year Award for Student Leadership.

To the packed room, Drummond, a female African-American in a field with a dearth of both, recounted how, from her father's workshop to the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and finally Carnegie Mellon, the sciences always came easy. At one point, she mentioned that she settled on biology and engineering in part because she found physics to not be challenging enough. Her audience responded with laughter. Confused, Drummond paused. She hadn't meant it as a laugh line. -- Bradley A. Porter (HS'08)