Shubhra Gangopadhyay is the one of the few female faculty at MU’s Center for Micro/Nano Systems and Nanotechnology. She’s also the one in charge of developing the center. In the Electrical and Computer Engineering department, of which Gangopadhyay is the LaPierre Endowed Chair Professor, she is one of three women. “There is a shortage of female scientists and female professors, in general,” Gangopadhyay says. “And in engineering, it is really not good.”

Gangopadhyay teaches classes for both graduate and undergraduate students. She also does outreach to local public schools, and many junior high and high school students visit her lab and work as summer interns. Nanotechnology is the science of the future, she explains, so it is important to get young people exposed early.