Melissa Hines has no idea what set her on a career path towards materials science. But her desire to be a chemist has not wavered since she was seven years old. This drive has helped to propel her to leadership at an interdisciplinary research centre comprising some 100 faculty members from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. (see CV)

As a chemistry undergraduate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, she followed prudent advice: work for a young faculty member who will have more time to devote to his or her students. Her choice was Sylvia Ceyer, who was not only the youngest member of MIT's chemistry department at the time, but one of the few women. Ceyer inspired Hines to work hard and to focus on surface chemistry. Ceyer also highlighted the importance of communicating science to the public.

“She convinced me that if you can't explain what you are doing to someone outside the field, you probably don't understand it yourself,” says Hines.

After a PhD in chemistry at Stanford University, Hines went on to a postdoc at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey — a career-altering experience. There, she learned how materials science could be used to solve problems in fields that she never would have encountered otherwise, such as the engineering and design of microprocessors.

She has combined that appreciation for applied research with her zeal for basic science in her current position as director of the Center for Materials Research at Cornell, which emphasizes collaborations between ten different departments at the university.

In this job, Hines finds herself revisiting the advice she got at MIT about communicating with the public. “People think of chemicals as something bad, to be avoided, and that's a real challenge that the scientific community needs to address,” she says. To meet that challenge, she gives seminars on public speaking for scientists to help them communicate with students, politicians and others.

Hines counsels students to keep an open mind about what kind of scientist they are and want to be. It seems odd advice from someone with such a focused career path, but she says that she has become much more open-minded about different research fields over the years.

“Life throws you a lot of opportunities and if you automatically shut these out, you could miss something wonderful,” she says.