Amber Young, Grace Hopper '21

Law to Physics: A Surprising Oscillation

By Sam Heimowitz

I met Amber for the first time during a Steppin’ Out (S.O.) retreat. We were in a tiny, cramped Uber: me, two other New Taps (what S.O. calls newly accepted members of the team), Amber, and the driver. We began talking about our academic interests, and Amber’s answer was surprising. By the beginning of her sophomore year, she had completely switched directions; instead of planning to go to law school and majoring in EP&E or African American Studies, she was now majoring in physics and doing physics research.

This was particularly striking. I’d heard so many times that students switch from a STEM major to a humanities major; rarely is it the opposite. Her sophomore fall, instead of breathing a sigh of relief from having gotten prerequisites out of the way, she was taking PHYS 180, MATH 115, and CHEM 161—introductory but brutal foundational STEM classes for any prospective STEM major. I thought to myself that since she had been the president of S.O., a demanding role in and of itself, and a physics major, another path with a grueling curriculum, she was either super smart and organized, or she must have some superhuman capabilities of which I cannot comprehend. I can attest that, although she may be a secret superhero (the world really shall never know), she is one of the most down to earth and genuine people I’ve ever met.

Amber is from Atlanta, Georgia. Growing up as a young black woman in Atlanta, Amber’s childhood had a profound impact on her future that she would only realize years later. She had felt and experienced racism “but didn’t know how deeply it had affected her.” When she took AP U.S. Government and Politics in high school, coinciding with the 2016 presidential election during her senior year, she finally began to learn academically about the things that she’d experienced in real life.

“You suddenly understand what you’d experienced in such a new light when you study it,” Amber noted. Amber not only delved into the academics of racial justice and injustice, but she had also been involved with Jack and Jill of America, an organization for young Black Americans. “I didn’t want anyone to go through the things I did,” and as such, she naturally wanted to go to law school.

Amber touched on how so often students from minority groups feel an obligation to “give back” to their communities and feel pressured to put themselves at the forefront of the fight for social justice, to the extent that they prioritize this over their personal dreams. It becomes difficult to find a balance—but this is exactly what Amber stresses so deeply. “A dichotomy can exist. I didn’t realize it for a majority of my life, and I thought that I had to choose. You can really want to fight racism and fight to defund the police, but you can still be very interested in neuroscience, or physics, or biology.” These social injustices are so steep and so complex, that sometimes “people forget that we have interests outside of fighting injustices.” Of course, she still deeply and truly cares about the most pressing social issues of our time. Yet, she also enjoys science. And she can equally care about both.

With STEM in the back of her mind, a pivotal moment in her experience was studying abroad in Cape Town the summer after her first year. Her program focused on social justice and social entrepreneurship, and the participants visited non-profits, met engineers, and spoke with entrepreneurs in their respective townships who were really benefiting their communities. This seemed simple on the surface, but in actuality, it was quite the eye-opener for her. She saw first-hand the different methods of how people gave back to their communities, and a lot of the initiatives were heavily rooted in science. For instance, one man in Khayelitsha, Cape Town, was running a computer science educational program for middle school students, while another had started a shop that focused on feeding people healthier foods with kale as the main ingredient. Before this experience, Amber “didn’t really know that there were so many ways to help others” in one’s community. Exploring the multifaceted nature of giving back is something Amber is currently invested in, especially evident in the fact that she serves as one of the Grace Hopper FroCos, guiding first-year students as they traverse the challenges of college life.

Importantly, Amber also wanted to stress that not only are STEM classes often not smooth sailing, but research opportunities are not always the easiest to acquire. Like many other students at Yale, Amber had never taken a physics class in high school. The learning curve for PHYS 180 was consequently incredibly steep. “I did so poorly on the first exam that Professor Adriane Steinacker emailed me personally, in a class of 300, after getting it back,” Amber remembers. With Professor Steinacker, Amber created a study plan, promising to sit in the front row during every lecture, ask a question every single class, and go to office hours everyday for up to three hours.

She was taken aback by the amount of support she had received from Professor Steinacker, and as a result, Amber decided that she not only enjoyed physics, but was also interested in potentially pursuing physics as a career. The problem was that as a newcomer, she had very little understanding of what all the different fields were. Thus, Amber emailed the DUSes of the three different physics departments in hopes of meeting to discuss the best path for her future. The first never responded, the second was very accommodating, and the third—well, that was a story I was shocked to hear. After asking Amber to send a résumé and transcript, this DUS proceeded to let Amber know that her grades limited her and explicitly remarked that she probably would not get into graduate school. This was certainly a setback, and it was clear that this DUS was discriminating against her as a Black woman. She toiled over what to do, and eventually reported this professor to Dean Chun for discrimination. In the end, she received support from Dean Chun, Dean of Student Affairs, Camille Lizarribar, and Dean of Science and QR, Sandy Chang. Despite this setback, however, Amber adamantly refused to turn away from physics, proving this DUS wrong and she has sought out hands-on experience in physics research. Yet, I still wondered what drew Amber to research in the first place.

Amber described that her interest in physics research was sparked by attending a talk with Professor Dan Goldman of Georgia Tech. The talk was so electrifying that she ran outside afterward and told him that she wanted to work in his lab (and I mean, she literally chased the man on the street. Now that’s dedication!). It paid off: after emailing him before the summer of 2019, reminding him that she was “the girl who chased you outside after your talk,” Amber received a position in his lab, the Complex Rheology and Biomechanics (CRAB) Lab. She says “if you don’t know what to do, go to a random talk. You’ll be able to tell if you get excited about a subject.”

Before her first day at the CRAB Lab, she was understandably nervous, thinking to herself, “Amber, what did you get yourself into? You’ve never even built a circuit before in your life!” She was pulling up Quora and Reddit for the basics—what do people actually do when they research? But her time with Professor Goldman was an amazing experience. She worked with a team to build a robot that would copy the motion of microorganisms that swim with four flagella. Then they put it in a slimy tub with gallons of mineral oil, and finally tested its velocity and fluid dynamics. By the end of the summer, Amber had not only narrowed down her interests, but also learned what a PhD is, what graduate school is, and most importantly, what research really is.

Amber then applied for and received the STARS II fellowship in her junior year, which provides funding for research projects. She encourages anyone who is eligible to apply, noting that it is a great way for underrepresented minority students to get involved in STEM and to create a community—something integral to success in both labs and in STEM at Yale. And, if you are scared of research or do not want to apply, Amber adds that Dean Chang will encourage you to apply anyway.

Amber has since had two more research experiences. In her first one, Amber conducted research in Yale’s mechanical engineering department. In the Biomechanics & Control Lab, she studied the influence of fin membranes and the overall stiffness of a fish’s pectoral fin, and how this all contributes to swimming. Even though she did enjoy this experience, she discovered that this was not ultimately the direction she wanted to take for her senior thesis project. Instead, she found that she wanted to focus on the neuroscience and neural circuits underlying locomotive behaviors such as walking, swimming, and even flying. Thus, she decided to switch directions and seek out a different research path.

Thereafter, she consulted a biophysics graduate student she had known from before, and after attending a research fair in November 2019, she determined that she was interested in Professor Damon Clark’s research. After receiving the green light from this student, she got in contact with Professor Clark. This turned out to be a fantastic choice. The Clark Lab, simply put, focuses on fruit fly locomotion and movement and how neurons contribute to behavior—the perfect choice for her interests. Explaining in more depth, she mentioned that humans have 86 billion neurons, mice have 70 million neurons, and flies only have 135,000, and yet their behaviors are so complex. Continuing, she said that “if you use a 2-photon microscope, and if you inject the fly with calcium, you can see different neurons light up in the brain.” She joined in the summer of 2020, completed a significant amount of training and work online, and formally joined in person in August. Compared with her previous Yale laboratory experience, she was blown away by Professor Clark’s different dynamic. For instance, he meets with her weekly for a one-on-one catch-up. She says it was amazing that “this professor cared so much just to meet with an undergrad, even if it was only for a half hour.” In contrast, her “previous PI would never meet with her” and “I didn’t even know where he was most of the time.” To top it off, with Professor Clark, she was even assigned to a new project on the neural basis of limb coordination. Overall, she said that it felt so nice to be supported and trusted, and most importantly to have someone “believe in me to do real science.”

Despite having gone from a more legal-oriented path to a very heavily STEM direction, Amber has definitely not stopped being involved in social justice and diversity and inclusion advocacy. She serves on Yale’s chapter of the American Physics Society; she assisted in writing a new DEI and code of conduct for Yale’s physics department; she interned at a local public school; worked at the buttery and as a Grace Hopper college aide; and she was a founding member of the Coalition of Allyship Advocates, an organization that grew out of 5A and NextYale, that has successfully designed diversity and inclusion workshops for that all first-years. This training will be mandatory beginning with the Class of 2025, who will have to attend in the fall of 2021. Even as she graduates, Amber’s legacy will still be felt among Yale’s storied walls.

All too often, it is easy to think you are not good enough to pursue your dreams. However, if you can find a mentor, and build or find a community, you can surely be successful and thrive. “You can’t do anything on your own. When people have faith on your own. When people have faith in you, it really impacts your success,” Amber says.

There are a number of lessons to be learned from Amber’s multifaceted experiences. First and foremost, if you face discrimination or harassment of any kind, you can always report it and should not be afraid to hold even tenured professors accountable. Second, keep your options malleable. You never know if one day you’re a dead-set English major and the next, you wake up wanting to pursue electrical engineering (or both!). Third, you may encounter trying situations that you must endure, but there is always light at the end of the tunnel. And lastly, you do not and cannot do it on your own. Especially considering the unique experience of life during COVID-19 pandemic, it is all the more important to find a network of peers and mentors on whom you can fall back and feel supported. As Amber likes to say, “it always takes a village.”