My name is Crystal Rapier.
I work for the Abraham P Lee Lab at The University of California Irvine.
And I'm a biomedical engineer and a PhD candidate.
I'm currently working on bioabsorbable materials that can be implanted into the body.
And the end goal with that is to create stents that can go into the arteries in the heart
to basically open them up if they've been closed due to plaque formation.
I'm creating a new medical device implant material.
Our material will hopefully be anti-inflammatory.
It will complete with conventional material.
Conventional material is metal and you have to remove that if there's any complications.
It stays in you forever so there's people who do not want that and they just want material
that can just do its job and degrade naturally once it's done.
I was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
I moved around a lot and I lived mostly East Coast and Midwest.
My father is a mechanical and aerospace engineer.
My mother started off in entertainment and then she became a school teacher.
She's the artist and my dad's more technical.
I have always been a thinker.
I just find science fascinating.
I didn't start out with a particular goal in mind to be a scientist when I was younger.
That's just things that I liked.
I just liked hearing about the planets, outer space.
I liked hearing about diseases and just how things work.
What motivated me to come to this particular lab was HIV and that there was no cure.
There is still no cure for it.
I always found it fascinating the virus itself because it's not living but it is.
It can change and we just can't get ahold on there, on it to create a cure.
So I was always interested in finding a cure for HIV.
I had an idea for a possible treatment.
When I came to UC Irvine, I saw that they were working on artificial cells and that's
exactly what I wanted to do.
So I had an aha moment and this is where I need to be.
This is another yellow room where we deal with photolithography and that's what we used
to etch the designs into our wafers.
It's the foundation of our device.
Working in lab is not isolating at all.
We do a lot of collaborations and we work together.
We have our own set project but sometimes that overlaps and we work together or if we
have a problem we can ask another lab mate who may have a solution to that problem even
though they may have nothing to do with what we're doing.
We still work together and talk through problems.
Go look at it.
If you're considering a career in science I would say go for it.
Especially if you like solving problems, if you just like to see how things work or if
you like creating things, if you're very creative, there's room for you in science.
I know some people I guess hold back or are kind of iffy about it.
They'll say oh I'm not good at math, as a number one excuse people use.
But don't use it as an excuse.
I myself had difficulties in math.
I bought a book at Barnes and Nobles just about the math fundamentals, the basics and
I worked through that on my own, at my own pace.
And that gave me the courage to pursue higher math courses so when I got here I had advanced
engineering and mathematics and I am not a traditional engineer but I get through it
so I just encourage people to do things like that.
If you're a high school student you don't have to wait until you're in college to actually
get into a lab.
You can contact labs directly, see what each lab is doing and what sounds interesting to
you.
Contact that professor or some students in the lab and say that you're interested to
actually come have a visit and, or possible work for the lab.
That's a great opportunity for you to see this is what you would like to do.
And you can do it now.