Deb Chachra Explained

Deb Chachra
Awards:NSF Career Award (2009)
Alma Mater:University of Toronto (BS, MA, PhD)
Thesis Url:http://hdl.handle.net/1807/16482
Thesis Title:The influence of lifelong exposure to environmental fluoride on bone quality in humans
Thesis Year:2001
Doctoral Advisor:Marc Grynpas
Workplaces:Olin College
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Deb Chachra (born 1971) is a materials scientist and a professor at Olin College.[1] [2] 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.

Chachra is the author of How Infrastructure Works, a non-fiction book published in 2023.[3]

Education and early career

Chachra grew up in Scarborough, Ontario.[4] Her parents were immigrants from New Delhi, India.[5] She wanted to be an astronaut.[6] She studied engineering at the University of Toronto where she completed her Bachelor of Science, Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy degrees.[1] Her PhD on the influence of fluoride on bone quality was supervised by Marc Grynpas[7] in the Department of Materials at The University of Toronto. She studied Colletes bees, which create a cellophane-like substance to wrap their eggs in tunnels.[8] The bees first create fibres of silk, followed by layers of plastics.

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.[9] She looked at the shelf-life of bioprosthetic heart valves.[10]

Chachra has contributed to The Atlantic and the comic Bitch Planet.[11] [12] [13] She is a trustee of the Awesome Foundation.[14] 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'.[15] She appeared on the PBS show If You Build It. She joined Olin College after her postdoc, working on fluoride and mineralised tissues.[16] [17] She was one of their founding faculty – the first class graduated in 2006.[18]

Engineering education research

thumb|Prof Chachra's students at Olin CollegeChachra studies the experience of student engineers.[19] She does not like to be referred to as a "maker" because she believes the world is associated with a male dominated culture.[20] She is part of Olin College's Collaboratory.[21] She writes a column for American Society for Engineering Education's magazine Prism called Reinvention.[22] At Olin College she is looking at how women and minority students engage with engineering education, designing interventions to improve retention and diversity. 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. 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.[30] [31] In 2009 she was awarded the American Society for Engineering Education William Elgin Wickenden Award.[32]

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Faculty Profile for Debbie Chachra, Ph.D. - Olin College. www.olin.edu.
  2. Ohland. Matthew W.. Sheppard. Sheri D.. Lichtenstein. Gary. Eris. Ozgur. Chachra. Debbie. Layton. Richard A.. Persistence, Engagement, and Migration in Engineering Programs. Journal of Engineering Education. 97. 3. 2008. 259–278. 1069-4730. 10.1002/j.2168-9830.2008.tb00978.x. 110595834 .
  3. News: Newitz . Annalee . 20 October 2023 . A passionate argument for the necessity of functioning infrastructure . . 7 November 2023.
  4. News: Debbie Chachra's letter to her teenage self. 2010-03-11. Science Club for Girls. 2018-11-08. en-US.
  5. Web site: Care at Scale. August 5, 2021. Comment Magazine.
  6. Web site: ASEE PRISM - Summer- Reinvention. www.prism-magazine.org. 2018-11-08.
  7. The influence of lifelong exposure to environmental fluoride on bone quality in humans. PhD. 51039818. 1807/16482. Debbie. Chachra. utoronto.ca. University of Toronto. 2001.
  8. Web site: Can Bees Make Tupperware?. 2001. scientificamerican.com. Eveleth. Rose. Rose Eveleth. Scientific American. 2018-11-08. en.
  9. Web site: The Gibson Group People. lornagibson.org. en. 2018-11-08.
  10. Julien. Maryse. Létouneau. Dany R.. Marois. Yves. Cardou. Alain. King. Martin W.. Guidoin. Robert. Chachra. Debbie. Lee. J. Michael. Shelf-life of bioprosthetic heart valves: a structural and mechanical study. Biomaterials. 18. 8. 1997. 605–612. 0142-9612. 10.1016/S0142-9612(96)00155-X. 9134160.
  11. Web site: Debbie Chachra. Chachra. Debbie. The Atlantic. en-US. 2018-11-08.
  12. Book: DeConnick, Kelly Sue. Bitch Planet #6. 2016-01-06. Image Comics. en.
  13. Web site: Debbie Chachra Milkfed Criminal Masterminds. milkfed.us. en-US. 2018-11-08.
  14. Web site: Debbie Chachra - Speakerpedia, Discover & Follow a World of Compelling Voices. speakerpedia.com. en. 2018-11-08.
  15. The Blissfully Slow World of Internet Newsletters. WIRED. 2018-11-08. en-US.
  16. Chachra. Debbie. Vieira. Anya P. G. F.. Grynpas. Marc D.. 2008. Fluoride and Mineralized Tissues. Critical Reviews in Biomedical Engineering. English. 36. 2–3. 183–233. 10.1615/CritRevBiomedEng.v36.i2-3.40. 19740071. 0278-940X.
  17. Web site: Olin College of Engineering - Faculty. olin.smartcatalogiq.com. en. 2018-11-08.
  18. News: Debbie Chachra's schedule for SCHED* SXSW 2011. 2018-11-08.
  19. Web site: Discover the Future of Research : 2018 : June : 25 Wiley. hub.wiley.com. en. 2018-11-08.
  20. News: Why I Am Not a Maker. Chachra. Debbie. 2015-01-23. The Atlantic. 2018-11-08. en-US.
  21. Web site: Collaboratory Olin College of Engineering. www.olin.edu. 2018-11-08.
  22. Web site: Reinvention. www.asee-prism.org. 8 October 2017 . en-US. 2018-11-08.
  23. Web site: Engineering Seminar: Debbie Chachra, Lessons Learned: On Starting a New Engineering School. umb.edu. en. 2018-11-08.
  24. Web site: Media Room & Blue Book – University of Toronto. Media. U of T. media.utoronto.ca. en. 2018-11-08.
  25. 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. 2153-5965.
  26. Web site: Developing a small-footprint bioengineering program. ASEE. 2018-11-08.
  27. Book: Stein. Lynn Andrea. Chachra. Debbie. Zastavker. Yevgeniya V.. Lynch. Caitrin. Sarang-Sieminski. Alisha. Proceeding of the 44th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education . An interactive exploration of gender and computing . 2013. Association for Computing Machinery. 205–206. 10.1145/2445196.2445260. 9781450318686. 1916486 .
  28. Chachra. Debbie. 2017. To reduce gender biases, acknowledge them. Nature. en. 548. 7668. 28836614. 373. 10.1038/548373a. 2017Natur.548..373C . 0028-0836. free.
  29. Web site: Media Room & Blue Book – University of Toronto. Media. U of T. media.utoronto.ca. en. 2018-11-08.
  30. Web site: NSF Award Search: Award#0953698 - CAREER: Exploring the Relationship Between Self-Efficacy and Project-Based Learning Among Engineering Students. www.nsf.gov. 2018-11-08.
  31. Web site: NSF Award Search: Award#1156832 - REU Site: Engineering Education Research: Understanding and Improving Student Experiences. www.nsf.gov. 2018-11-08.
  32. Web site: ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition. 2018-11-08.

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