Meet Ciara Sivels, first Black woman to receive a PhD in Nuclear Engineering

Ciara Sivels has become the first black woman to earn a doctoral degree in nuclear engineering from the University of Michigan, the top program in the country.

“It was something that was in the back of my mind as I was going through the program,” Sivels told HuffPost.

“So yeah, it was something that I thought about, but I tried not to make it the focus because I didn’t want to add more stress to the rigor of the program.” Sivels, 27, successfully defended her disseration “Development of an Advanced Radioxenon Detector for Nuclear Explosion Monitoring” in October.

The Chesapeake, Virginia native says she initially did not want to pursue nuclear engineering.

After high school she had set her heights on culinary. She took an AP chemistry class her junior year of high school, she says, and her teacher encouraged her to pursue a career in STEM. She went on to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where she majored in nuclear science and engineering.

“I remember the teacher from that class saying, ‘Oh, you’re really smart, you should think about doing something other than culinary,’” Sivels recalled.

“So that’s kinda how I switched over into engineering and eventually ended up at MIT and ended up in the nuclear program.”

With the lack of diverse representation in the STEM field, Sivels says there’s still work to do.

“My two big things are representation and exposure,” she said.

“I feel like my path could have been a lot easier if I would’ve been exposed to things at a different time. I still feel like exposure is key and representation also helps, because you have people that look like you that can help pull you up when you’re failing.”

Sivels will work at John Hopkins in Baltimore but eventually wants to transition into academia.

Congratulations Ciara Sivels!