From freezing a roll of wet, color-dyed toilet paper and other household items in the fridge of her family kitchen to study how their properties changed to seeing her chemical engineer mother who worked at Clorox test out various cleaning and mopping products in their home, the young Claire Huestis was a budding engineer even before she turned nine years old when she lost her mother to cancer.
“My mom was the biggest influence in kick starting my interest in STEM,” said the UCLA alumna and now process engineer at Amgen, a leading biotechnology and pharmaceutical company headquartered in Thousand Oaks, California. “Although she was only with me for the early years of my life, she left a huge impact. She helped spark my curiosity about the natural world, and a love for learning about it.”
Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area in the suburb of San Ramon, Huestis was…
