TATUM S. LIPARULO
ALL ABOUT ME
First and foremost, I am a PhD student in the Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh. This is hardly a complete description about who I am, what I am passionate about, and what I want to accomplish in life, but starting here will anchor my story. As you scroll through this page, I hope to take you on my journey to where I am today. While it is certainly not linear, and all of the pieces don't quite fit together, they are the puzzle that defines me.
A Girl in Stem
The story for most women in engineering starts with a young girl passionate about math and science, and for me it is no different. I loved learning about biology and chemistry, which came naturally to me. My grandma would sign me up for engineering summer camps at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown to foster my passion even further. I was often one of a few girls in these camps, but if anything that helped prepare me for the reality that I would be one of a few women in engineering in general. This was probably an unintended side effect of being at these camps: I was so quickly made aware of being considered the anomaly in the room that I became wildly passionate about workplace representation. Regardless of the obvious lack of representation I was determined to become an engineer. In high school I learned about vaccine development in response to the 2013 Ebola Outbreak in Sierra Leone, and talking about this with my AP Chemistry and AP Biology professors guided me towards becoming a chemical engineer. I knew that I wanted to work in the pharmaceutical industry developing life-saving treatments to prevent disease.
Parallel to engineering I was a heavily involved musician. As a child I played piano, winning scholarships through the Willoughby Fine Arts center in Willoughby, Ohio. In middle school I wanted to be "different" so I decided to pick up bassoon; I quickly fell in love with this instrument that is often neglected in beginner's music but thoroughly celebrated in more advanced repertoire. I joined the Cleveland Youth Wind Symphony my freshman year of high school, and I became first chair of the top ensemble my junior year. My senior year I also joined the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra. I went on international tours with both groups, which exposed me to cultures and experiences I never would have seen otherwise. I couldn't leave this huge part of my life and identity behind when I went off to college, so I would be both engineer and musician when I decided to attend Penn State University.
My first opportunity as a chemical engineer
I was fortunate enough to receive scholarships to Penn State for both Bassoon Performance and for my academic achievements. Even so, I had to work up to 30 hours per week on top of being a full time student in both chemical engineering and music. This was a very busy time for me, but somehow I was able to persist and excel given the circumstances. This hard work brought me my first internship at Kimberly-Clark Corporation (KC) as a Process Engineer. I did not envision myself working at a diaper manufacturing facility in Ogden, Utah when I started as a Chemical Engineer but I knew that the experience I would gain from this opportunity would be invaluable.
The invaluable experience at KC proved worthwhile: I was offered my dream position as a Downstream Process Development Co-op at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). I was working on the harvest team, where we were the first step in the lengthy process of separating therapeutics from cell culture. I also worked on an independent research project to develop and validate novel processing techniques using newly-available depth filtration devices to replace the costly (both in money and time) centrifugation of cell harvest processing. I successfully demonstrated that not only did this technique resulted in the same purity and yield as the standard process, but the processing time and cost was greatly reduced. I learned that the next step in my journey would be graduate school, so that I could refine my research and eventually lead my own research team.
I took two more internship opportunities before starting graduate school. Neither were research experiences in the pharmaceutical industry, but I enjoy exploring different sides of chemical engineering in a variety of business units. I believe these experiences give me an edge: a unique technical background over multiple industries inspires novel ideas while problem solving.
Graduate School Goals and Internships
A Perfect Storm
From Mauvais-Jarvis et al, 2020.
Right before I could decide on graduate schools, the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Reflecting back on the beginning of 2020 brings up mixed emotions, as this period left me laid off from my job and on unemployment for several months. I was fortunate enough that I could use this time to read, which I always seemed to busy to do even though it's one of my favorite things to do. I began a book that would change the course of my research, "Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men" by Caroline Criado Perez. This book takes a data-centered approach to documenting the many ways women are negatively impacted in a world designed for men. This book was a revelation and a confirmation of what I had felt for most of my life.
Conveniently, as I began graduate school at the University of Pittsburgh a few months later, Dr. Jason E Shoemaker presented a research opportunity in his group studying the sex differences in the immune response to influenza using computational and machine learning methods. Aside from a C++ course, using Mathematica at Penn State, and building Macros in excel, I had no experience with computational research. I knew that despite this obvious hurtle, my passion for research that could directly lead to improving women's lives made this project an easy choice.
​