Jingyu Lin - 2016-17 SPIE Women in Optics Planner
Horn Distinguished Professor; Linda Whitacre Endowed Chair, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Texas Tech University
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Country of Birth: China
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I grew up in China. Because of my background, there was no second thought for majoring in a discipline other than math, physics, or chemistry. Among these three disciplines, I found physics most interesting because of its ability to describe physical phenomena in simple and beautiful equations.
My job consists of teaching and researching. These activities include daily interactions with graduate and undergraduate students, understanding experimental results, reading research articles, writing research proposals and papers, etc.
Balancing career and family was a challenge. I met my husband at Syracuse University where we worked in the same research lab and had the same thesis advisor. I was lucky to have a husband who is my lifetime collaborator, and we raised three sons together. We are also very lucky that we have supportive parents from both sides and that our kids are all naturally gifted so we never had to be “tiger Mom” and “tiger Dad”. Being a successful professor is not just solving problems on the paper or in the lab, but one must also learn different skill sets to be an effective
manager and communicator.
A career in STEM is very challenging but rewarding because you really get to see beautiful results a few times or many times in your lifetime, and your work could have a long-lasting impact. You could balance a career in STEM and family by learning to be an effective team player in your workplace/ family, resilient to rejections, believing in yourself, and persistent.