The future is bright for 19-year-old Regina Anand, who recently headed off to Saint Vincent College in Latrobe to study biochemistry.
Anand, a graduate of the Saint John Paul II Homeschool Co-op, participated in the Carnegie Science Center’s Tour Your Future program for six years. The program allows participants to tour workplaces where people are working in STEM fields, in addition to asking those individuals about their career paths.
It was this experience, plus a dual-enrollment at Duquesne University to study chemistry during her junior year of high school, that influenced Anand to pursue a career in STEM.
“I’ve always loved science; it has always been my favorite subject,” she said. “My career goal is to be a doctor, and biochemistry fuses both bioscience and chemistry.”
Anand’s interest in chemistry is also what inspired her research that ultimately won her the first-place designation in the Pittsburgh Regional Science & Engineering Fair chemistry category.
Her project mixed chemistry with another one of her interests: Art and painting. Anand wanted to learn which paints could best withstand the effects of UV light and be able to withstand sunlight over long periods of time. Doing so involved constructing her own UV chamber, where she could test different paints in a controlled environment.
“UV light is extremely dangerous, so what I did was I engineered a method of exposing paintings to an extreme amount of UV light in an apparatus that I was able to construct and use in a safe manner,” Anand said. “I constructed a method where I was able to bombard my paintings with UV light, but it wouldn’t affect me or anyone else.”
Using the UV chamber, Anand was able to simulate what her own paintings would look like if exposed to direct sunlight for 143 years.
Anand also is an advocate for women and girls entering traditionally male-dominated fields. She has served on the youth advisory board of the National Girls Collaborative Project, which is a network of organizations that encourage young girls to pursue careers in STEM.
Join us at The Assembly in Bloomfield on Sept. 20 to honor our Fire Awards recipients and celebrate innovation, resilience and the spirit of entrepreneurship.
