Deb Chachra
Born1971 (age 52–53)
Alma materUniversity of Toronto (BS, MA, PhD)
AwardsNSF Career Award (2009)
Scientific career
InstitutionsOlin College
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
ThesisThe influence of lifelong exposure to environmental fluoride on bone quality in humans (2001)
Doctoral advisorMarc Grynpas[1]
Websitedebcha.org

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.

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.[2] Her PhD on the influence of fluoride on bone quality was supervised by Marc Grynpas[1] in the Department of Materials at 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.[8]

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.[16] She joined Olin College after her postdoc, working on fluoride and mineralised tissues.[17][18] She was one of their founding faculty - the first class graduated in 2006.[19]

Engineering education research

Prof Chachra's students at Olin College

Chachra studies the experience of student engineers.[20] She does not like to be referred to as a "maker" because she believes the world is associated with a male dominated culture.[21] She is part of Olin College's Collaboratory.[22] She writes a column for American Society for Engineering Education's magazine Prism called Reinvention.[23] At Olin College she is looking at how women and minority students engage with engineering education, designing interventions to improve retention and diversity.[24] She works with engineers all over the world on the development of new education programs.[25][26] She has investigated group- and project-based learning in engineering education.[27] She explored ways to develop a bioengineering program with a small footprint.[28] In 2013 she studied gender and computing, developing a "Gender and Engineering Exploration Kit".[29] Chachra has challenged academic publishers to combat bias in the industry.[20] She has written editorials for Nature about the experience of women engineers.[30] She continues to return the University of Toronto, talking about the design of engineering education.[31]

Awards and honors

Chachra received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award to work on engineering education.[24][32] In 2009 she was awarded the American Society for Engineering Education William Elgin Wickenden Award.[33]

References

  1. 1 2 Chachra, Debbie (2001). The influence of lifelong exposure to environmental fluoride on bone quality in humans. utoronto.ca (PhD thesis). University of Toronto. hdl:1807/16482. OCLC 51039818. Free access icon
  2. 1 2 "Faculty Profile for Debbie Chachra, Ph.D. - Olin College". www.olin.edu.
  3. ↑ Ohland, Matthew W.; Sheppard, Sheri D.; Lichtenstein, Gary; Eris, Ozgur; Chachra, Debbie; Layton, Richard A. (2008). "Persistence, Engagement, and Migration in Engineering Programs". Journal of Engineering Education. 97 (3): 259–278. doi:10.1002/j.2168-9830.2008.tb00978.x. ISSN 1069-4730. S2CID 110595834. Closed access icon
  4. ↑ Newitz, Annalee (20 October 2023). "A passionate argument for the necessity of functioning infrastructure". The Washington Post. Retrieved 7 November 2023.
  5. ↑ "Debbie Chachra's letter to her teenage self". Science Club for Girls. 2010-03-11. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
  6. ↑ "Care at Scale". Comment Magazine. August 5, 2021.
  7. ↑ "ASEE PRISM - Summer- Reinvention". www.prism-magazine.org. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
  8. 1 2 Eveleth, Rose (2001). "Can Bees Make Tupperware?". scientificamerican.com. Scientific American. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
  9. ↑ "The Gibson Group | People". lornagibson.org. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
  10. ↑ Julien, Maryse; Létouneau, Dany R.; Marois, Yves; Cardou, Alain; King, Martin W.; Guidoin, Robert; Chachra, Debbie; Lee, J. Michael (1997). "Shelf-life of bioprosthetic heart valves: a structural and mechanical study". Biomaterials. 18 (8): 605–612. doi:10.1016/S0142-9612(96)00155-X. ISSN 0142-9612. PMID 9134160. Closed access icon
  11. ↑ Chachra, Debbie. "Debbie Chachra". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
  12. ↑ DeConnick, Kelly Sue (2016-01-06). Bitch Planet #6. Image Comics.
  13. ↑ "Debbie Chachra | Milkfed Criminal Masterminds". milkfed.us. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
  14. ↑ "Debbie Chachra - Speakerpedia, Discover & Follow a World of Compelling Voices". speakerpedia.com. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
  15. ↑ "The Blissfully Slow World of Internet Newsletters". WIRED. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
  16. ↑ If You Build It | Webisode | America ReFramed, retrieved 2018-11-08
  17. ↑ Chachra, Debbie; Vieira, Anya P. G. F.; Grynpas, Marc D. (2008). "Fluoride and Mineralized Tissues". Critical Reviews in Biomedical Engineering. 36 (2–3): 183–233. doi:10.1615/CritRevBiomedEng.v36.i2-3.40. ISSN 0278-940X. PMID 19740071. Closed access icon
  18. ↑ "Olin College of Engineering - Faculty". olin.smartcatalogiq.com. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
  19. ↑ "Debbie Chachra's schedule for SCHED* SXSW 2011". Retrieved 2018-11-08.
  20. 1 2 "Discover the Future of Research : 2018 : June : 25 | Wiley". hub.wiley.com. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
  21. ↑ Chachra, Debbie (2015-01-23). "Why I Am Not a Maker". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
  22. ↑ "Collaboratory | Olin College of Engineering". www.olin.edu. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
  23. ↑ "Reinvention". www.asee-prism.org. 8 October 2017. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
  24. 1 2 "NSF Award Search: Award#0953698 - CAREER: Exploring the Relationship Between Self-Efficacy and Project-Based Learning Among Engineering Students". www.nsf.gov. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
  25. ↑ "Engineering Seminar: Debbie Chachra, Lessons Learned: On Starting a New Engineering School". umb.edu. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
  26. ↑ Media, U of T. "Media Room & Blue Book – University of Toronto". media.utoronto.ca. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
  27. ↑ 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". ISSN 2153-5965. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  28. ↑ "Developing a small-footprint bioengineering program" (PDF). ASEE. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
  29. ↑ Stein, Lynn Andrea; Chachra, Debbie; Zastavker, Yevgeniya V.; Lynch, Caitrin; Sarang-Sieminski, Alisha (2013). "An interactive exploration of gender and computing". Proceeding of the 44th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education. Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 205–206. doi:10.1145/2445196.2445260. ISBN 9781450318686. S2CID 1916486. Closed access icon
  30. ↑ Chachra, Debbie (2017). "To reduce gender biases, acknowledge them". Nature. 548 (7668): 373. Bibcode:2017Natur.548..373C. doi:10.1038/548373a. ISSN 0028-0836. PMID 28836614.
  31. ↑ Media, U of T. "Media Room & Blue Book – University of Toronto". media.utoronto.ca. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
  32. ↑ "NSF Award Search: Award#1156832 - REU Site: Engineering Education Research: Understanding and Improving Student Experiences". www.nsf.gov. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
  33. ↑ "ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition" (PDF). Retrieved 2018-11-08.
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