Senior Research Scientist Charts Path from Civil Engineering Student to Disaster Investigator
DISASTER SCIENTIST TALKS ABOUT LEADING DISASTER INVESTIGATIONS, IMPORTANCE OF PROFESSIONAL SOCIETIES
“Earth, Wind and Fires: Learning from Disasters” is how the Sandra Lee Heyman Foundation Fellows guest titled her January 2022 session. Dr. Judith Mitrani-Reiser, a senior research scientist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), offered the Fellows insights from her journey as a Cuban-born public high school student to earning degrees at three different universities, working in the private sector, teaching at a prominent university, and heading up federal government investigations of building failures.
When first entering the University of Florida, Mitrani-Reiser said she was advised to explore engineering because of her interest in math and science – and encouraged to take an engineering lab course. “That gave me a little bit of a taste of every different discipline within the engineering school. Every week I did a different kind of lab and in a different department. And I got a sense for what it would be to be that kind of engineer,” Mitrani-Reiser told the Fellows.
In the end, Mitrani-Reiser said, “I just really loved everything about the civil engineering lab.” She told the Fellows, “I was hooked in my first semester and I decided that was the career I was going to pursue and I didn’t waiver from that.” Even so, “life throws curveballs at you, and I promise your life will too,” she predicted.
“While I was at the University of Florida…I became really engaged and invested into student organizations…so student chapters of what is now my professional organization, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). And I’m Latina so I really wanted to join the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE). And in both of those I had an opportunity to network and meet lots of other engineering students. And I loved it, and it was just really fun to engage in that way.”
After receiving her B.S. in Civil and Coastal Engineering from the University of Florida, and her M.S. in Structural Engineering and Mechanics of Materials from the University of California at Berkeley, she switched graduate schools for personal reasons and earned her Ph.D. in Applied Mechanics from the California Institute of Technology. Today, among other work projects, she leads the NIST investigation into the structural collapse of the Champlain Towers South apartment building in Surfside, FL, last year.
Mitrani-Reiser offered insights into the differences among the variety of civil and structural engineering disciplines, the role that math played in her education, and especially how she faced additional challenges in graduate school based on her cultural background. Responding to a question from one of the Fellows, she said “There were some times my male colleagues would insinuate that I got certain things because I was one of the only women in my program. And that was very insulting, and it made me feel like an outsider. But you have to learn to block out those moments, and you have to learn to surpass them and educate others on how, in fact, you deserve, you belong, you have arrived there for a reason, and no one should ever make you feel like an outsider.”
The Sandra Lee Heyman Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization established in memory of Sandra Lee Heyman, a long-time mathematics teacher at the elementary, middle school, high school, and community college levels. The 18-month long Fellowship is aimed at promising high school students who have the opportunity to meet with STEM leaders, visit prominent institutions in the Washington, D.C., area, and access peers and mentors to support career exploration in STEM fields. There are multiple ways to support the Fellowship program, and donations to the Foundation are tax deductible.