M.S. student battled hardship in pursuit of thesis

A Start and a Setback

Isiah Ramos has always carried with him a deep love and appreciation for engineering. It’s a trait he developed in childhood, going back to Saturday mornings spent flipping TV channels to find his favorite cartoons. His favorite show, Dexter’s Laboratory, was about a boy genius who built a million things in a giant laboratory hidden in his family’s house. 

“That’s literally what I wanted to do,” Ramos recalled nostalgically. “I wanted to have this big lab and do all these cool things, make robots, make a potion that teaches you French, you know?” 

From those childhood seeds, passion began to grow, and Ramos’ dreams quickly gained momentum. When he reached high school, he ended up qualifying for and attending the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy. This unique experience offered him a chance to do research with experts in the field as an upperclassman, further cementing his desire to make a career related to engineering happen.

Going to college would be harder for him, however. As one of three siblings in a family situated in an impoverished part of Aurora, Ill., Ramos grew up surrounded by financial difficulties.  He would be the first person in his family to ever pursue higher education.  

“I had always been told that if I go to college, it’s on me,” he said. “It was always going to be on me financially.” 

After completing his high school diploma in 2011, Ramos was ready for the next step. He chose the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign because it offered cheaper, in-state tuition. He entered the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences to pursue an Agriculture and Bioengineering degree, taking out student loans and using savings he built from past jobs.  

His strong start didn’t last, however. Financial challenges started to snowball. By the first semester of his sophomore year at Illinois, his funds had run out. Facing an impossible situation, Ramos made the hardest choice and dropped out. 

It would be nearly a decade before he would return. 

The Materials for Resilience 

Unsure of what to do, Ramos had to start completely over. He became a bartender and worked for minimum wage, sometimes until as late as 4 a.m., for years to make ends meet. In fact, it took him eight years to reach a strong enough financial state to return to school. 

In the fall of 2018, he began again at Parkland College. He still wanted to explore engineering but started by dipping his toe in the water to see where he stood.

“Before I get deep into debt again, let me make sure I can still do this,” he remembered thinking at the time. 

With a far stronger financial base and added maturity that could only come from life experience, Ramos quickly discovered he was ready for this next chapter. His time at Parkland immediately proved fruitful and led to participation in multiple Research Education for Undergraduates programs during the following summers. 

In 2019, he took part in the Phenotypic Plasticity Research Experience for Community College Students (PRECS, an REU funded by the National Science Foundation, in which he studied the impact of a peripheral influenza infection on the central nervous system of mice. This was a valuable experience that ultimately led him to the work that completely changed his career trajectory in the summer of 2020. It happened in another REU from The Grainger College of Engineering’s Illinois Materials Research Science and Engineering Center housed in the Materials Research Laboratory.

There was no in-person work at the time due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but Ramos found an opportunity when he was tasked with writing a review on graphene biosensors built for his choice of application.

“Seeing how the different concepts from all my courses blended together so seamlessly into one study really got me excited,” Ramos said. “I hadn't seen quantum mechanics applied to a biosystem before and that really got me engaged!” 

Ramos said the materials science and engineering REU experience was eye-opening in that it showed him how widespread the impact of materials in the world around us can be. Materials also provided reasoning for why objects behave in certain ways – for example, why a ceramic blade can cut through a metal while another can’t because of how their atoms interact. Explanations are deeply satisfying at a core level to Ramos, going back to childhood. 

“If I’m watching a show where people have superpowers, I like to figure out the little details that make the powers possible. I don’t want a deus ex machina, like Superman flies because he’s Superman,” Ramos said. “So when we zoom all the way back out (from examining atoms) and see it all come together on a bigger scale, that just scratches a really good part of my brain.” 

The Grainger Engineering REU was a mental launching point for Ramos into the world of materials science. He graduated in the spring of 2022 from the U. of I. with an undergraduate degree in agriculture and bioengineering, then applied for and was accepted into the materials science and engineering master’s program. 

Career Ambitions 

The Master’s of Science (M.S.) program offered in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering is designed to build a foundation for life after graduation, whether it involves further education or an industry path. Those who pursue the degree can expand on undergraduate training, enhance professional skills and gain the required experience to become a scientist or engineer.

Ramos was excited to follow this path and quickly found the M.S. program to be extremely beneficial. He knew the direction he wanted his eventual master’s thesis to move in and found the program made it easy for him to chart his graduate student journey and pursue grant money.

“You get to choose whatever you want from the materials courses available, so I tailored my course work in such a way that it allowed me to efficiently build the background information I needed to write my own grant proposals,” he said. “I knew I wanted to do self-assembly work, and that I would have to write my own proposal since I want to start a new project. I took classes that built on the foundational theory needed to understand self-assembly theories and one course led by Senior Lecturer Jessica TerBush on professional writing. The course had an emphasis on industry formatting, but academic proposal writing was also discussed.” 

Unfortunately, the grant proposal he worked on came up just short of the approval it needed for him to receive the funding, with four out of five reviewers giving it the green light when he needed a clear sweep. But still, thanks to the years of bartending that helped him save up and make the journey back to the U. of I., he was in a strong financial position to keep moving toward his thesis. He also had a 50 percent research assistant appointment with Associate Professor Elif Ertekin of Grainger Engineering's Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering. 

“It’s technically not a huge payout compared to an industry salary, but I’ve spent eight years on a far stricter budget, so I assure you I’m living pretty well these days,” Ramos said with a laugh.  

The focus of his master's thesis, which was completed in early October, examines correlated ion hopping of lithium ions through solid-state halides. He wrote an algorithm in Python that aims to detect correlated ion jumps. At the time of his interview with the materials science and engineering staff, he was still working to analyze the data. At that point, he seemed optimistic about where the results of his research were pointing. 

The goal for Ramos is to move from the completed thesis to the pursuit of a materials science and engineering doctorate. Beyond that, he has a strong interest in chasing a career in industry – a decision that would send him on the same trajectory as most materials M.S. graduates, as statistics show 69 percent of students from 2014-2021 pursued industry career paths. Some consideration was given to going the academic route after hopefully achieving his Ph.D., but his professional interest appears to be in bioengineering-related work.

 At the end of it all, Ramos seems headed to have the chance to make his engineering dreams a reality. He even works hard to help other students with their academic goals, as he spends a chunk of his time helping out in the Granger Engineering transfer office as a graduate student academic advisor. In this role, he assists community college students coming from Engineering Pathways and Intent to Pursue Pathways. These Illinois programs seek to help students wearing the shoes Ramos once walked in - those coming from a community college education - with making a successful transition to Grainger Engineering. 

"Being a minority student myself that struggled with financing my education, a lot of good people have helped me on my journey to becoming a graduate student," said Ramos. "I feel it is my personal obligation to pay it forward at every opportunity presented to me."  

Grainger Engineering Affiliations

Jessica TerBush is an Illinois Grainger Engineering senior lecturer of materials science and engineering and an instructor for the Materials Science and Engineering Junior Lab.  

Elif Ertekin is an Illinois Grainger Engineering associate professor of mechanical science and engineering. She is associate head for graduate programs and serves as director of mechanics programs. Ertekin holds the Andersen Faculty Scholar appointment.