10/24/2024 Jackson Brunner
Written by Jackson Brunner
Destined for STEM
It was obvious from a young age that Amyra Black was destined to be an engineer.
“I grew up just building stuff and taking things apart,” she said. “I’d make a robot out of cardboard boxes or anything I could find around the house. It would be pretty annoying to my mom.”
Sure, she might have made a bit of a mess sometimes. But her mother also noticed her daughter’s aptitude for STEM. When the right time arrived, she signed Black up for an accelerated high school program. It was a non-traditional route focused on college-level courses.
Black ended up at Metro Early College High School, located on the campus of The Ohio State University, in a program focused on design. She learned how to write code, how machinery works and how to build. It only made sense that her college choice would follow this trajectory, and she ended up pursuing a mechanical engineering degree at Tennessee State University.
It’s common for engineers to pursue industry careers instead of diving further into academia, but Black knew she wanted a greater challenge and decided to climb into the graduate ranks.
Arrival at Illinois
In the summer of 2022, Black stepped on the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus for the first time. It’s safe to say the attraction was instant.
She had arrived for a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) opportunity within The Grainger College of Engineering. The program immediately put her exactly where she wanted to be - at home in a lab setting - where she worked with Associate Professor Arend van der Zande. She had the chance to tour campus facilities, such as the Materials Research Laboratory, and noticed how much the college had invested in equipment.
“Putting money into your programs and your students really shows,” Black said. “I could just tell that it was well-funded.”
Seeing the setup for research and interacting with welcoming faculty further convinced Black that Illinois was where she needed to be. As she searched for ways to expand her engineering knowledge, the Department of Materials Science and Engineering caught her eye quickly.
With the help of funding from a Graduate Engineering Minority Fellowship opportunity, Black quickly became entrenched in the department’s Master’s of Science (M.S.) degree program. She quickly joined a research team led by Nancy Sottos, the department head of Grainger’s materials wing.
Black said she took only one class on materials science before she arrived at Illinois. Getting involved in the Sottos group allowed her to tackle the subject of polymers and ease her way into the research she’s taking on today.
“I do a lot of work with frontal ring-opening metathesis polymerization,” she said. “We’re turning a solution from a liquid to a solid. It’s energy-efficient and it’s making a thermoset plastic.”
Black’s research opportunities haven’t been limited to the Illinois campus. She also has taken part in a summer research assistantship at Argonne National Laboratory for the last two years. Opportunities in this program included work in 3D modeling, writing code and image analysis.
What’s Next?
All of the research experience Black gained from her work on campus and Argonne is preparing her for life after education.
She credited the Master’s of Science program for preparing her to tackle future opportunities in life. She noted its emphasis on interdisciplinary research in allowing a seamless transition from mechanical engineering to materials science.
“The MS program provided numerous professional development opportunities that continue to shape both my research abilities and leadership skills,” Black shared.
She said she experienced even more professional growth through opportunities to present her research at conferences, including the International Materials Research Society. Further, she was able to help provide guidance to younger students when she participated in a graduate student panel at the Illinois Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, which is part of the Materials Research Laboratory on the U. of I. campus, in the summer of 2024. She talked to undergraduates about the importance of building professional relationships.
Having been through each of these opportunities, Black is ready to confidently move into her next chapter. The immediate goal for her is to pursue a Ph.D. in materials science and engineering. She’s already thinking about being ready for qualifying exams and expects to move into the Ph.D. program toward the start of the next academic year.
Once she’s completed her education, Black wants to work in industry as a researcher for a company. She says she loves working in a lab. The feeling traces back to her time spent building things as a child, providing the same happiness now as it did back then.
“It just makes me feel excited to work with equipment,” she said. “I can make things in the lab and do small chemical reactions and things like that. I think that’s where the building part of my engineering brain gets scratched.”