At only 27 years old, Ciara Sivels is the first Black woman to earn a doctorate in nuclear engineering from the University of Michigan, reports Blavity.com.
The Chesapeake, Virginia, native has accomplished a major win at the top nuclear engineering program in the country. In October, Sivels successfully presented her thesis on “Development of an Advanced Radioxenon Detector for Nuclear Explosion Monitoring,” but she didn’t always have a passion for science.
When she graduated from high school, the scholar wanted to study culinary arts. It wasn’t until her teacher encouraged her to try her hand at STEM that she developed interests in nuclear science and engineering.
“I remember the teacher from that class saying, ‘Oh, you’re really smart, you should think about doing something other than culinary,’” she shared in an interview with Huffington Post. “So that’s kinda how I switched over into engineering and eventually ended up at MIT and ended up in the nuclear program.”
