‘I’m happy that I get to show other potential woman scientists and scientists of color that you can do this; that it’s not unattainable.’

Upton

“I was the first African-American woman in the U.S. to earn a Ph.D. in the field of radiochemistry. I didn’t set out to be the first, I didn’t know until after I defended my thesis. I wanted to be a medical doctor when I was growing up, a trauma surgeon, since I was around 12.

“Something about being in the ER, even to this day, gets me very excited. Being surprised with a problem and then having to put the puzzle together. ‘What happened to this person and how do we fix it?’ has always been exciting to me.

“When I went to college, I was taking pre-med and I felt like I wasn’t being challenged. It was, memorize this and memorize that. I like to solve problems and I wasn’t solving enough problems. One of my mentors said, ‘Why don’t you try chemistry?’ She sent me on a few internships, and I got to work with a biochemist, who was manipulating RNA for Alzheimer’s research. At the time, my father was going through dementia, so it was near and dear and I thought, ‘This is really cool.’ “I switched my major, and my institution started to introduce undergrads to radiochemistry, so I worked at a nuclear reactor for a summer and really learned it. I was just blown away.

When I started grad school, there were not many places in the country that offered radiochemistry. I really like the radiopharmaceuticals and developing these imaging agents. Brookhaven National Lab is the birthplace of the technetium generator. I was like, ‘I have to get to Brookhaven.’

“Someone at the nuclear reactor told me about University of Las Vegas and introduced me to who would become my thesis advisor there and worked on technetium chemistry – trying to develop novel imaging agents for various cancers. When I started grad school, there were not many places in the country that offered radiochemistry.

“I really like the radiopharmaceuticals and developing these imaging agents. Brookhaven National Lab is the birthplace of the technetium generator. I was like, ‘I have to get to Brookhaven.’

“Once I defended my thesis, I came to BNL as a post-doctoral and we have these huge instruments, high powered accelerators where we can produce radioisotopes for different applications. Now, I’m a staff scientist here and we are developing not only imaging agents but potential therapeutical agents for the treatment of disease. I’m happy that I get to show other potential woman scientists and scientists of color that you can do this; that it’s not unattainable.”