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"I'm an artist who found a canvas in engineering" - Dana Stamo - Ep. 10

On CUE sits down with Dana Stamo. Dana is a fifth year chemical biological engineering student who is currently taking graduate classes and doing research with Professor Chatterjee. Dana is a recipient of the Chancellor's scholarship and a BOLD scholarship from the College of Engineering and Applied Science. She is the former vice president of Out In STEM, was a discovery learning apprentice with Professor Zhao and a mentor for the Engineer Me summer program. She's also a passionate artist, innovator and rule breaker. 

Read more: #ILookLikeAnEngineer: Dana Stamo, ChemBioEngr'18

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Dana Stamo

TRANSCRIPT

Announcer

And now from the University of Colorado in Boulder the College of Engineering and Applied Science presents; On CUE.

Maria Kuntz

Welcome to this addition of On CUE. I'm Maria Kuntz and I'm here with CU engineering student and all star Dana Stamo. Dana is a fifth year chemical biological engineering student who is currently taking graduate classes and doing research with Professor Chatterjee. Dana is a recipient of the Chancellor's scholarship and a BOLD scholarship from the College of Engineering and Applied Science. She is the former vice president of Out In STEM, was a discovery learning apprentice with Professor Zhao and a mentor for the EnginearMe summer program. She's also a passionate artist, innovator and rule breaker.

Dana, thanks so much for joining us today.

Dana Stamo

Of course, thanks for having me.

Maria Kuntz

So, you're studying chemical and biological engineering at ²ÊÃñ±¦µä. Why don't we start by talking about that? How did you choose chem-bio?

Dana Stamo

So I really loved biology in high school and I had two very Romanian and very fierce engineers as parents which meant that I also had to be an engineer. So I started finding out about this amazing world of prosthetics and the organ donor shortage and I realized that there was room for Engineering in Medicine so I looked for something that sort of melded biology and engineering, and just in the name I was like OK this is fine, and I kind of got lucky because it turns out to be exactly what I wanted to do.

Maria Kuntz

That's awesome. I’ve heard you talked before about family and you mentioned them just now it seems like family and community are really important to you. How have they shaped your academic and life choices?

Dana Stamo

So my mom has an incredible… incredible power over my life. She's like a very fierce Romanian woman. Like imagine like heavy accent, lioness comes into the room. Her presence is known. So growing up with that you learn to also be fierce so like being a woman in engineering. I had to be fierce in that respect. And then also finding my community here I learned how to be inspired by the people around me and draw from that and use that energy as fuel and creativity and innovation. And it's just like built up into that just wanting to surround myself with people that make me better and then getting excited about our projects together, and then we all just sort of grow as a whole.

Maria Kuntz

That's amazing. So I first heard you talk a few weeks ago maybe a month ago and I just was really inspired by your story and everything you had to share about your perspective on engineering and life. I heard you talk quite a bit about following your gut. Where did this come from and how does that evolve for you over time?

Dana Stamo

So I think following your gut is also something I have to attribute to my mom. It's like this weird… She always told me that if you can envision where you want to end up then everything else comes naturally. And it's like the universe is just giving you opportunities but they're right there because you already see yourself where you want to be. The opportunities make themselves obvious whereas if you were thinking about how am I going to get there you think about the risks and you think about oh is this the right decision to make at this point. So that's kind of what I do. And to link it back to something I'm doing now in skating. I skateboard! If you think about how to do a trick like I need to move my foot here and then I need to drag my foot up the nose and then I need to land a certain way. You're not going to be able to do the trick you have to visualize yourself landing the trick. And then you'll be surprised at how much your body does on its own. So really taking that to heart and just knowing where I want to end up and then trusting my gut when it says do this, like follow this, follow this opportunity.

Maria Kuntz

Seems like that might be applicable in school and in engineering.

Dana Stamo

Everything. Everything like the way I did in school was I just having this weird quirk in late high school that I just started to learn languages and I just enjoyed languages. So when I came to university I thought, heck, whatever I’ll do a minor in German. Turns out Germany is on the forefront of biomedical engineering, and every time every time I speak to biomedical companies and I give them my resume and say "Also, I'm fluent in the language where your company is based out of," that helps me a lot. And it wasn't me like looking at companies in high school that was just me being like hey, Germany.

Maria Kuntz

That's amazing what are the other languages you speak?

Dana Stamo

Romanian was my first language and my parents are from there. I studied Chinese for six years and middle school and high school. It's gone. It's gone. I had it at one point but it's gone. And then I just like dabble in a bunch of other languages, like my boyfriend's family they speak Spanish so now I'm kind of learning that too? Question mark.

Maria Kuntz

Amazing. That's really cool. You're kind of a renaissance woman I think. Every time I hear you talk I learn something new. Whether it be partying or learning languages and one of the reasons I was really looking forward to talking to you today was also about art. I know you're an engineer, an engineering student. But you spoke so passionately about art and how art has been influential to you as an engineer, and I wonder if you could just riff off of that, share more about what that means to you.

Dana Stamo

Yeah totally. So art was a really big part of middle school and high school for me because my friends and I got very into anime, and then we are very into making our own characters which meant we were drawing our own characters and for whatever reason I got very good at drawing if I had a reference. I learned how to find relationships between lines and relationships between sizes and shading all sorts of things like that. So logically the next step was I will take a class on art and I hated it. It was the most awful thing because they told you how to do art. And I just had this like guttural, like no, like that's the complete opposite of art. Like no wrong! Just let me do what I want! But they were like "No you must do a charcoal landscape and it must have this cactus." I just I hated all of it so I stopped taking art classes and I just started doing art on my own and I started watching videos and hanging out with other people who did art and art became, I don't even want to see an outlet, it just became the thing that I did. And I was always trying to work with new media and always trying to learn new techniques. But ultimately I started in middle school training myself to look at things with different perspectives. That's the way that you have to do it if you're trying to draw something realistically. So I'm trying to draw a pair of glasses. If I were drawing glasses I have to forget I'm drawing glasses. I have to look at relative distances and shading and highlight, and then once I distort the image and forget I'm drawing glasses connecting all of the different perspectives in one place the image rises out of it like an optical illusion. So I thought what if I do that with engineering?!

Maria Kuntz

That's incredible. So how have you done that with engineering?

Dana Stamo

So there was a pivotal moment where I went to Hawaii and I was learning about jellyfish and I was learning about it from the context of natives so people who lived there telling us what to watch out for, and one guy even like pulled up his shirt and showed us like scars he had, and the cool thing about the scars is they looked like the tentacles like exactly where those tentacles were situated.

I had this thought that it can't possibly be secreting an oil or a protein or something that's irritating to our skin. It's got to be injecting it if it's so precise and it has to be very rapid because it's not sitting there for very long. And then I put the pieces together and thought we should do for drug delivery like that would be a brilliant way to deliver drugs, that would be rapid, it would be localized. And I looked into it and I found that the University of Chicago did it like two years ago and I just had this moment of like this is what I need to do, like I need to look at nature, be inspired by nature the same way I was inspired to do art but then turn it into engineering. So now, I'm not an engineer, I'm an artist who found a canvas in engineering.

Maria Kuntz

Oh wow that's so such a cool way of putting it. So when you saw that they were studying this already at the University of Chicago and they started doing this five years ago, what do you think? did you give that up? Are you pursuing it or how did that 'aha' moment translate to what's going on in your life and in engineering right now?

Dana Stamo

So I realized that there is a whole area of engineering that just focuses on being inspired by nature. So I had already had a position lined up to work in a lab in the Mechanical Engineering Department at CU and that's how I spent my fourth year. But in that lab they were trying to learn how to mimic muscle and they were really inspired by cuttlefish because they have this really complex muscle system that can also change color and allow them to camouflage, and it can change texture. You can do all sorts of things so we thought we should try to make that and we have these really clever polymers that are able to change shape when you apply heat to them. And then we also wanted them to be able to sense the environment that they're in because muscle does not move blindly. It has to react and interact with its environment. So we thought OK, well we need something that moves and we also need it to have a circuit so that can interact with the environment like a robot. Right? But if you have a circuit that changes shape that circuits going to break and then you don't have a circuit anymore. So we had to get really clever and we started using liquid metal that melts when you heat up the polymer to distort it. The circuit also melts and then distorts with it. So then you actually have a soft robot, a proper soft robot and the whole point of this was to make robotics integrate with the biology that you're trying to work with. You're doing so much in robotics. You need it to be more bio compatible. But ultimately this tuned me into biomimicry and being inspired by nature. So now there's like there's like my pre-jellyfish engineering period, and then post jellyfish engineering period and the jellyfish is like the fulcrum and like how my eyes were opened into the world of research. But now I work in a lab where we're trying to find a way to treat very elusive bacteria and these bacteria, maybe they're elusive because they're multidrug resistant, maybe they're elusive because they like to hide in parts of the body that our immune system can't reach. So one of the bacteria that does that is the bacteria that causes Lyme disease and this bacteria hides in your articular cartilage and it hides in your central nervous system and those areas are more or less immune privileged. So your body doesn't want to be breaching barriers and sending the immune system in there because inflammation in such a vital organ is dangerous. So instead it is a really safe place for bacteria to hide.

Maria Kuntz

So articular cartilage.. does that mean..

Dana Stamo

Knee cartilage

Maria Kuntz

Knee cartilage thats the main place.

Dana Stamo

Yes that's why people with Lyme disease get Lyme arthritis.

Maria Kuntz

OK.

Dana Stamo

So the idea now is how do you treat something that the immune system can't reach and antibiotics can't reach. So in this lab we work with quantum dots and quantum dots are like very tiny, tiny metal particles and they're small enough that they can get into those areas, they're smaller than antibiotics, they're smaller than our immune system cells. So we can get them into these hard to reach places and we can put stress on bacteria and we can kill them that way.

Maria Kuntz

So the quantum dots the metals just putting stress. Is it delivering some kind of actual medication? Other than the metal?

Dana Stamo

There is no medication. So it's actually just oxides stress and oxides are a very important part of metabolic processes in every living thing. So with antibiotics you have one chemical that's targeting one part of the bacteria. Maybe it's the cell membrane, right. Maybe, it's you know some some part of producing a protein that they need. But when you're messing around with oxides they start slipping into the metabolism and it's such an integral finely tuned part of the bacteria that it just goes haywire. It can't fight back with that, it can't evolve to match that.

Maria Kuntz

So is this something that you think we're going to see in the next two years? Five years? 10 years? I mean what do you think the future of this type of research is?

Dana Stamo

So there's a whole issue with diseases today, right. Because you have a bacteria that develops antibiotic resistance to everything, to the last resort. Like think meningitis right, like the biggest scariest like sorry we can't treat that. It's just not working. That's the issue is that bacteria are going to keep evolving and pharma today is just hitting it with the same things. And it's a huge investment to come up with a new antibiotic that just a couple of months later, there's already a bacteria with resistance to it. So this I see as the future of pharmaceutical drugs. And it's not even a drug, and ideally it shouldn't have side effects because it's not introducing a new chemical. So it's a very clever way of treating all kinds of bacteria and it's very, finely tunable. So the idea is we have the potential for a future where we can rapidly come up with a cure for whatever bacterial infection comes up, whether that bacteria is resistant whether it hides, however clever it may be. All we have to do is tune this system and we can hit that bug.

Maria Kuntz

That is so cool. I've got a couple questions that came out of this so, I've heard you mention sort of personifying bacteria, calling them clever and I wonder if you could just say more about that what's your experience your relationship to the research to these living organisms?

Dana Stamo

So my P.I., my mentor and my professor that I work with, she told me that.

Maria Kuntz

And who is that?

Dana Stamo

Professor Anushree Chatterjee she's in the biological and chemical engineering department.

Maria Kuntz

And you're doing this research in her lab?

Dana Stamo

That's right.

Maria Kuntz

Great.

Dana Stamo

She told me that I have to imagine that I am bacteria and think What would you do? Right. And she's definitely made a case. We're not that different from bacteria. We still have our own wiring and our own instinct and if we're in danger and if something's attacking us we're going to try to hide, right. And we're going to try to fight back. So it is just a matter of understanding how each bacteria has evolved to try to protect itself from stress.

Maria Kuntz

A survival strategy.

Dana Stamo

Exactly. Exactly.

Maria Kuntz

Well that's a whole new spin on bacteria. Never imagined would be something like micro particles of liquid metal into kneecaps to bacteria. That's fascinating. So we were talking about art a few minutes ago and I'm curious because of the way you've expressed that art has influenced your ability to see into engineering, and think differently. Is that showing up in your current project in your current research as well?

Dana Stamo

So one of the things that I did, probably just a couple of months ago, with one of my other lab mates, is we just got a canvas and some paint and just went for it. Like no rules no plans just like see what came out of it. And you know at some points I had like my little watercolors and I was doing a like some fish or something on the side. And then he had like just put paint onto the canvas and it was just like smearing it around with a paint brush, kind of looks like a kraken, I don't know. Then like up on the top there is, like more, you know, just straight paint on the canvas. And then he just started smearing it with our hands. And then the product of it is like this incredible dynamic. It's filled with emotion but the idea of it is like there are no rules, and it's cool that this was my lab mate because this is like it's like a visual representation of how we work together in the lab, when we're bouncing ideas off each other, and we're just like going for trying something different when we're like manufacturing some weird sort of little earpiece, but all of this culminates into the way that being given freedom to do science, shows itself very visually appealing, but then also innovative because I think what doesn't matter, how much planning and how much forethought you put into it you will never come up with something as dynamic as what we just did on that canvas without having to think about it. And I think that's the value in engineering where you just like, let loose follow your gut, follow your gut do what feels right and explore something that maybe other people haven't even if you think it's going to fail that's how you learn. But part of it is just like going for it, just try it.

Maria Kuntz

It sounds like fearless and innovative you know, I think there is a stereotype out there about engineers about them being like very much, like people who stay in the lines and follow the rules and you know, there are mathematicians and scientists and they you know in the worst case scenario they have the pocket protector like these are, there are stereotypes but they're old they're not. I don't think they're really relevant anymore but I don't know if people outside of engineering communities like this understand the diversity of thought and people who are engineers. What do you think about that? Like your peers what do you see them doing that maybe people outside of an engineering school or community don't realize about engineers?

Dana Stamo

So I think that particularly when you're educating young engineers, the biggest problem is that they're being taught 'the right way' to do science right. They're given a problem and they're given the step by step. This is how you solve this problem and then these students graduate and they do well in school and then they go onto to go to industry or to go to graduate school and then there are thought then they are told: think outside of the box. Do something different and creative. But no one ever told them that, everyone always told them the right way to do it the one way, the box, inside the box way to do it. And then what's really valuable is thinking differently but they're never given permission to do that. So I think that the real value in seeing things differently and engaging the diversity of thought that exists in engineering and why it's valuable to have people of different backgrounds is because they think differently and because that's what you want when you're when you're trying to come up with new ideas. You want people to have different backgrounds. You want people who know how to think not what to think.

Maria Kuntz

That's awesome. Do you think there are particular faculty members or staff or individuals who you think really do embrace this notion of the diversity of thought and maybe have encouraged you or you've seen them encourage students to break out of the box in engineering?

Dana Stamo

So I think the best example I have to say Professor Chatterjee again. I actually showed her my #ILookLikeAnEngineer page where she read about how my approach to engineering is very much art and very much allowing yourself to be surrounded by people who are different than you and taking pride in having a different perspective and letting that show when you're thinking about new ideas. And her response to that email was there is no better way to do science, and I think that was the best thing that I could have heard because getting that confirmation from someone who has made incredible discoveries and who has led a team of really brilliant people, that mattered a lot to me and that definitely gave me more confidence because when you're an undergraduate by yourself breaking the rules and people are like hey don't do that.

Maria Kuntz

Can be scary

Dana Stamo

It's terrifying. It's terrifying.

Maria Kuntz

But you’re doing it.

Dana Stamo

I'm doing it.

Maria Kuntz

Yeah, you’re blazing trails.

Dana Stamo

I'm breaking the rules.

Maria Kuntz

That’s awesome. Also you mentioned that #ILookLikeAnEngineer campaign. I didn't necessarily think we would talk about that today but you did participate in it and can you just share what drew you to that campaign?

Dana Stamo

So I was invited to do the photoshoot because I was vice president of OSTEM, Out In STEM, which is like the LGBT plus community for engineering and for other STEM fields; science, technology, engineering, math. There is a community for that. There is a lot of overlap and representation is important. And I really enjoyed being part of that. But then I heard about I look like an engineer and I thought there would be a great opportunity just to demonstrate that we exist, like engineering is not one person and it's not one type of person. My big lie in that campaign is consider how limiting it is to surround yourself with people just like you. If you're surrounding yourself people who think like you you're not challenging yourself, right? You have to defend yourself and defend your own opinions. You're also not considering the different perspectives right and it's hard to see that unless someone says hey have you considered have you considered this side of it. And I think that's such a valuable part of engineering because you have to be able to think in different perspectives and then it links it back to art, right? Where you are forcing yourself to see the different perspectives and I think linking the dynamics of seeing things differently in art and seeing things differently amongst my peers and seeing things differently in engineering, it all links back to the way I'm able to take things apart and sort of navigate around them do a little 360 or on whatever I'm looking at. And that's the only way I'm able to learn and the only way I'm able to create. So I've just been forcing myself to engage with that more and more, and I can't do that unless we have diversity in this field.

Maria Kuntz

Exactly. Sounds like you're really, like whatever you do you just kind of go all in, really immerse yourself in it. Look around you and that is just so inspiring and it's really incredible. I wish everyone could see the look on your face because it is so powerful. Hopefully they hear it in your voice. So you mentioned being the vice president of Out In Stem or OSTEM at ²ÊÃñ±¦µä and you know we're hearing a lot in the news right now about the need for diversity in STEM professions. You know Google's been in the news and I wonder if this is something that you're discussing in OSTEM either at the CU level, at the local level, at the national level. What are you, being the organization, what are you and your peers in that organization talking about?

Dana Stamo

So let's see. Recently we started having discussion nights which is a new idea that one of our members pioneered because they just wanted to talk to someone about their experience and again, see the different perspectives. Right. Yeah it all links back. But we started having these discussion nights and we realized that there's such a need for diversity in engineering, because when we're coming up with different ideas you could completely ignore something that somebody absolutely needs and that it that stems from the way that they interact with their world and the way that the people around them interact with them. And maybe that can be how they present themselves. Maybe that can be, maybe that can be how they look me that can be like where they're from, maybe they have an accent, like whatever aspect of themselves the world interacts with that is a side of the world that they need to respond to and engineering is a response to problems, it's a response to challenges. So you need to have these different ideas and perspectives if you're coming up with a solution. So the real value of that is you can't have one person with one answer the same solution or one same solution to one problem. You need to have multiple, different ideas. And that's the only way that you can simulate new creations and proper innovation.

Maria Kuntz

So when are the discussion nights? Are those open to the engineering community? is it OSTEM members only?

Dana Stamo

So OSTEM really prides itself on letting anybody come and hang out with us, whenever they want to. Our only thing is, you've got to like science or math or engineering or technology or any aspect of that. And you have to be chill with the LGBT community, don't have to be a part of it. You just are chill with us. You're welcome to hang out. And we have them I believe we do discussion nights once a month, but we are still in the process of our summer... our summer planning for next year.

Maria Kuntz

So stay tuned September of 2018 also started up again. Yeah. That's really cool to hear that that's happening I don't know about that. I know you're busy this summer. You're working, traveling, you're doing research, and I know you started grad work at CU already. So what keeps you engaged in engineering and this work?

Dana Stamo

So it's the same.. the same reason that I do engineering is the reason why a draw. So it's relaxing and it's inspiring and it's fun and I get to just create things and when you draw something and you're really proud of it, it's the same feeling I get when like oh my gosh our prototype works! We did it! So it's like the same.. the same feeling it's like this deep very guttural like I need this to exist. So it's not so much I have to go to work and get paid. Oh I have to go to work and finish this thing because my PI asked for it. It's like I need to create things and this is my favorite canvas that I've found. So this is me creating and it's like this deep human, like very primal need to just like make things and create things and just like, put the pieces of myself onto whatever that I've created.

Maria Kuntz

Well we are so lucky that you are so inspired and energized by work and life. And I know I can't wait to keep hearing and learning about what it is you're creating and really and bringing into this world. So, we've talked a lot about research and art and your personal life, and I wanted to, since you know we've got some time with you, ask you a little bit about what drew you to CU? Why are you here? There are engineering schools all over the country and all over the world. And you know, what have been the best parts of your experience at CU? And why you’re here?

Dana Stamo

So I just followed my gut. I heard I don't know. I kept hearing little things about CU and it was almost like the world around me was just like insisting, like just check it out. Just try it. Just go see it. Just... You don't even have to like it just go check it out. And it was things like my AP literature teacher just was like, I have to go defend my thesis at the ²ÊÃñ±¦µä and I was like oh, OK. Interesting interesting. And then a friend who was like oh I'm considering ²ÊÃñ±¦µä and he was like two or three years older than me so I hadn't even started thinking about college but my brain was like why does it keep insisting on it. It keeps coming up. So I asked my mom can we just go see it. And we came here and it was the only school I visited that felt so right and just like being in this environment. And like I remember doing the engineering tour and like seeing the ITLL and this is amazing like I can sodder on my own, this is so cool! And I just got so excited about the freedom that they gave me. This is my dream school which a lot of people are like really? like. Yeah. Oh yeah definitely CU. But let me see some of the most impactful things that have happened here… Definitely the people I've met have been the best, the people that I've met who came here also like I.. My boyfriend is from Florida and he came here because he just wanted to be somewhere where he would enjoy. And like we like take these awesome like bike ride trips up to the mountains like up into Boulder Canyon and then ride our bikes back down and both of us are like we live here. This is our backyard. We can come here all the time. And it was just like the coolest part of it is that I get to be inspired by where I live. I don't have to go far to engage with nature and to be inspired by everything that I see and the people around me are excited to be here. It's like an awesome environment.

Maria Kuntz

We are so lucky. Boulder is gorgeous. Colorado is a beautiful state. And if you're inspired by nature, well we are surrounded by nature. That's really awesome. So let's look back a little bit on your younger self or a younger self and maybe it's not you, a younger person, where you might have been a few years ago. What would you say to a high school student who's contemplating engineering or maybe even do a first year student who's here is studying engineering, but isn't really sure if this is their forever home. What advice do you have for them?

Dana Stamo

So I felt like that a bit too because I'm out of state and my family and my mom that I'm very close to, they're all in Arizona. So it was hard to… I felt I abandoned them. My first freshman year here I felt so bad and I wanted to fly home every weekend. But I also started getting very disillusioned with engineering because I chose biological and chemical engineering. I don't understand why they put me in physics. I was like no, that was the one I didn't mention I didn't want physics and like there I was, right, like doing Newton's laws. But I had this moment of like I realized the way things are interconnected and I realized like this is when I gradually started to let engineering become my own thing. So in taking these classes and in allowing myself to start experimenting and letting myself get creative with how I studied and get creative with how I approach new information, I started a journey of finding the way art incorporates into what I do in engineering. So I think my best advice is, before you quit it, give yourself permission to break the rules and see how that feels.

Maria Kuntz

Good advice. You mentioned earlier about seeing yourself already achieving what it is you want and not worrying about the steps in between. So maybe not worrying about passing physics and understanding any Newtonian physics but instead knowing, you know, keeping that end game in sight. What does your endgame look like right now?

Dana Stamo

My endgame right now looks like the Elon Musk of medicine.

Maria Kuntz

Wow. Watch out. Dana Stamo the Elon Musk of medicine. I believe it. I think I can't wait to see where you are in five,15, 20 years. I think CU’s really lucky to have you here. This community is better off with you here for sure. So last question. Drumroll, I'm wrapping it up. What is one thing that you've learned in the past few years that you wish you had known a few years ago?

Dana Stamo

Just permission to break the rules and see how that feels. 100 percent. And the cool thing is, I have to give BOLD a little shout out, because it's the only, the single only, community in engineering that gave me permission to break the rules, explicitly. That allowed me to come in and said be youself be loud about who you are, like proudly, passionately, vibrantly, be yourself. And then do engineering. And I saw everyone who came in through these doors, that was who they were. You would see people from all sorts of different backgrounds and they were so, like shamelessly themselves and it was so inspiring to see that. And when I saw that, when I interacted with the staff here I realized that I am allowed to break the rules. I can be whoever I want to be in engineering and I can make it whatever I want to be. So I wish I would have told my younger self to break the rules sooner and I wouldn’t have lost so much time I could have learned about jellyfish way earlier. I could have beaten University of Chicago!

Maria Kuntz

Next time! That is such good advice for everyone who’s kind of early on in engineering. And actually it's just great advice for life. Break the rules. For those of you who are listening I want to direct you if you're interested to learn more. To colorado.edu/engineering/. You can search hash tag #ILookLikeAnEngineer and learn more about the I look like an engineer campaign and if you'd like to learn more about the BOLD center which is the Broadening Opportunity through Leadership and Diversity center at CU engineering you can find that online at colorado.edu/BOLD/ . Dana thank you so much for all of your time today. Your inspirational story stories brings so much passion to life and engineering. And I'm really grateful to have shared this time with you. Learning more about you and what you do.

Dana Stamo

Yeah it was awesome. Thank you for having me.

Announcer

This has been On Cue. For more information visit colorado.edu/engineering