Editor’s Note: As we gear up to celebrate 60 years of this tradition with you, let’s take a moment to remember some of the best of our previous Distinguished Alumni with Hall of Fame: Rewind. We hope you’ll enjoy reading about our outstanding alumni honorees from the past who shape the ranks of honorees of the future. Julia Chan received the 2006 Young Alumna Award. Chan defies the odds in the scientific community with her research on electronic and magnetic materials, which are crucial for technology. Click here to watch interviews and speeches from previous Hall of Fame events, or click here to learn more about this year’s event and honorees.
This article was first published in the Summer 2003 issue of The Baylor Line.
When you hear the term “research chemist, “what comes to mind? An absent- minded, middle-aged man — with his hair standing on end — pouring bubbling liquid into a beaker?
Dr. Julia Chan ’91 just doesn’t fit that image. For starters, her tool of preference is not a beaker, but something called an X-ray diffractometer. And she works with solids, not liquids. She’s petite and gregarious, a native of Malaysia who chose Baylor because of its music school and still plays the violin in her church orchestra.
And there’s also the fact that she’s a woman. Last year, Chan was named one of twelve outstanding women in the field of chemistry by the American Chemical Society, along with the prediction that her research will have “a significant impact on chemistry during this century.”
When asked to describe that research, Chan explains, “I’m a materials chemist, which means I am interested in synthesizing a compound, characterizing the material, and measuring its physical properties. The motivation is to find new electronic and magnetic materials which are important to information technology.” For example, Chan is now collaborating with engineers to make a superconducting, nano-size device to retrieve information from a computer hard drive. (Translation: that’s an itsy-bitsy gadget to help your computer go faster.)
The other contributions she is making are less “material,” but no less substantial. As she says, “I want to make this a more scientifically literate society. And with the science that I do, I can.”
Essential to that contribution, Chan believes, is her collaboration with scientists in other areas. “Someone may be a specialist in one area,” she believes, “but to do big science— that is, to make an impact in science— you have to work in multidisciplinary research.”
Chan has received around S3 million in funding since joining the faculty at Louisiana State University. She collaborates with physicists and engineers all around the world, and she encourages her students to do the same.
“One thing I enjoyed about Baylor was the good undergraduate education I got,” Chan says. “I had teachers who cared about teaching.” Influenced by Dr. Marianna Busch at Baylor, and by another female mentor at the University of California-Davis, she tries to assume the role of mentor for her students, too. Her research group of five PhD students and three undergraduates includes three women doctoral students and several other minority students— a fact she acknowledges is rather unique, especially in physical science.
But asked if students are drawn to her because she is a woman or a racial minority, she replies, “Naah. I think it’s because I’m enthusiastic and do multi-disciplinary work. They know they’ll have to work with all sorts of people, and when they graduate from my group, they’ll have the language skills to communicate. I think they know that’s a strength.”
As a professor, she puts a heavy emphasis on writing. “You can be the best scientist in the world,” she says, “but if you can’t communicate, no one’s going to know that you did it.”
This balanced approach to her work is also evident in other areas of her life, something she attributes to her Baylor education as well. “I was on the Welcome Week steering committee at Baylor back in 1993,” Chan says, “and that wheel has always been poked somewhere in my brain.
“I still enjoy physical activity, playing violin in my church orchestra, having a good time with my friends. I look like anybody else,” she adds. “I’m like a normal professor — well, kinda.”
