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Vitals<\/p>\n
Hometown: Boston<\/p>\n
Education: BS, chemistry, Wellesley College, 2009; PhD, chemistry, University of Florida, 2015<\/p>\n
Current position: Assistant professor, bioengineering, Northeastern University<\/p>\n
Hobbies: Traveling and making YouTube videos on my channel, Planes, Trains, and Canes<\/p>\n
Favorite movie: Gattaca<\/p>\n
Favorite ways to unwind: Listening to audiobooks and talking to friends<\/p>\n
In her fourth year of graduate school at the University of Florida, Mona Minkara was ready for a new challenge. Mike Weaver, one of her mentors, encouraged her to try teaching, even though she was attending on a fellowship that relieved her of such duties. Others in the chemistry department were skeptical. How was she going to teach? The department had never had a blind teaching assistant before. \u201cI told them, \u2018Give me anything. Let me try,\u2019 \u201d Minkara says.<\/p>\n
She wasn\u2019t given much: a general chemistry recitation that wasn\u2019t required and that, historically, most students stopped showing up to after the first day of class. Still, \u201cI poured my heart and soul into it,\u201d she says. During her first class, 14 students sat in attendance. By the end of the semester, that number had jumped to 50.<\/p>\n
The students wanted more. So the department approached Minkara with the suggestion that she continue to teach as a volunteer. She declined. By then, she had learned what she needed: the experience had \u201cignited the possibility in my mind that I could be a professor,\u201d Minkara says.<\/p>\n
Six years later, Minkara opened her own research laboratory at Northeastern University with a focus on computationally modeling hard-to-study immunoproteins found on the surface of lungs. Minkara, who was diagnosed with macular degeneration and cone-rod dystrophy at the age of 7, has redefined what is possible for blind scientists.<\/p>\n
Minkara\u2019s curiosity for science began to grow when she was a child, and her interest never strayed, even as she became fully blind and people in her life kept telling her how impractical her dreams of becoming a scientist were. \u201cYou couldn\u2019t stop me from pursuing science,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was just part of who I am.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, imposter syndrome and internalized ableism plagued Minkara throughout the early years of her academic career. As an undergraduate student at Wellesley College, Minkara gravitated toward quantum chemistry, fascinated by the interactions of molecules on the atomic level. But as the first blind science student in the college\u2019s history, she was constantly struggling to ensure she had the resources she needed. So when she was choosing a PhD program, access to accommodations mattered just as much as the research. \u201cI knew I couldn\u2019t fight for accommodations and get a PhD at the same time,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Minkara chose to attend the University of Florida after the head of its disability office sat her down and told her they\u2019d provide her with whatever she needed to succeed. She joined Kenneth Merz\u2019s lab, where she modeled enzymes produced by infectious gastrointestinal bacteria. But even with support from UF\u2019s disability office, she questioned whether she was going to make it through her PhD program. On the first day of classes, she got lost trying to find the chemistry building. She remembers thinking, \u201cIf I can\u2019t even make it to the building, how am I ever going to write a thesis?\u201d<\/p>\n
\n Mona Minkara wears a brown coat, goggles, and a helmet over a black hijab. She is standing in a desert with one black, one blue, and two red all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) in the background. A person dressed in all black is sitting on the black ATV looking at the camera.<\/p>\n
Mona Minkara in Morocco in 2022 riding quad bikes while filming her travel web series Planes, Trains & Canes.<\/p>\n
Credit:
\n Natalie Guse<\/p>\n
Her confidence finally started to grow when she was a postdoctoral fellow in J. Ilja Siepmann\u2019s lab at the University of Minnesota. Siepmann believed that because Minkara was blind, she\u2019d be able to think about problems differently and solve problems no one else could. Before that, \u201cI never thought of my blindness as an asset<\/a>,\u201d Minkara says.<\/p>\n In Siepmann\u2019s lab, Minkara used Monte Carlo simulations to study how surfactants in personal care products like shampoo behave in different environments. She relied on computer programs she wrote to probe the properties of a large number of confirmations. She \u201canalyzed and searched for different features than what people who rely on sight do,\u201d Siepmann says. \u201cTo some extent, she was ahead of what I would call the machine learning revolution that relies on algorithms to find patterns in large collections of images.\u201d<\/p>\n Inspired by her time in Siepmann\u2019s lab modeling molecules at a liquid-air interface, Minkara now studies how proteins found in our lungs, known as pulmonary surfactants, behave. These proteins \u201cregulate the surface tension in the lungs, allowing us to breathe,\u201d Minkara says, and are a first line of defense against airborne pathogens that cause diseases like pneumonia and COVID-19. If a person lacks the right amount of surfactants, they\u2019re more susceptible to certain diseases.<\/p>\n Her lab group at Northeastern uses molecular docking, Monte Carlo, and molecular dynamics simulations to decode how different surfactant proteins interact with pathogens. Recently, her group identified how certain mutations in surfactant protein D<\/a> enhanced its binding to influenza A virus, which has implications on human health.<\/p>\n Last year, Minkara was awarded a US National Science Foundation Faculty Early\u00a0Career\u00a0Development (CAREER) grant and a Maximizing Investigators\u2019 Research Award (MIRA) from the US National Institutes of Health to continue her surfactant protein research. \u201cThat was a really pivotal moment for me,\u201d Minkara says. \u201cMy peers found my ideas worthy of being funded.\u201d She recently achieved another goal: she submitted her application for tenure.<\/p>\n Minkara also shares the lessons she learned while navigating her career as a blind scientist. For much of her career, she\u2019s had to figure out everything as she goes\u2014how to teach a class, write a thesis, run a lab, apply for grants. \u201cI want to make it easier for the next person,\u201d she says. \u201cI want there to be a next person.\u201d<\/p>\n “You couldn\u2019t stop me from pursuing science.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0 It was just part of who I am.”<\/p>\n Share Minkara has published how-tos on how she made it through her doctoral program<\/a> and taught her first class at Northeastern University<\/a>. And since her time as a PhD student, she\u2019s kept up a web page of advice and lists of software and hardware tools for blind scientists<\/a>.<\/p>\n But for there to be more blind scientists, younger blind students need more opportunities to engage with science. For Minkara and her collaborator Bryan Shaw, a bio-inorganic chemistry professor at Baylor University, that means figuring out how to make science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education more accessible. In 2022, the two, along with a larger team, developed 3D-printed tactile graphics <\/a>that allow blind people to analyze scientific data like mass spectra and gel electropherograms.<\/p>\n Through a partnership with the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired, Minkara and Shaw have brought their tactile graphics, along with other accessible technology, straight to high schoolers. Minkara is \u201cthe embodiment of what we\u2019re trying to teach these kids,\u201d Shaw says. \u201cThat if you want to be a scientist and you\u2019re willing to put in the time, you can be one.\u201d Now that the team has made data more accessible to blind students, Shaw says the focus has turned toward doing the same with wet chemistry labs. \u201cWe\u2019re doing it one tool at a time,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
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