Meet five women in science with Clemson ties who are making a difference

International Day of Women and Girls in Science is celebrated globally each year on February 11.

To celebrate, we are highlighting five women with ties to the Clemson University College of Science and how they are making a difference with their work.

Renée Lyons

Renée Lyons thought she wanted to be a high school English teacher — until she took geology her sophomore year in college to meet the school’s graduation requirements. 

“I remember dreading taking the course because I thought I was really bad at science and that it was going to be awful,” said the first-generation college graduate. “It ended up being one of my favorite classes. I just loved the way science looks at the world, the objective nature of science as compared to the more subjective nature of what I was studying at the time, which was literature. That class is when I discovered my love for science.”

She told her college advisor that she needed to change her major to biology.

Not having a lot of exposure to science careers, she thought the two options for science majors were to be a scientist in a lab or a doctor. She decided to be a doctor because she loved working with people. When she was a senior, Lyons realized medicine wasn’t a good fit for her.

“Being a first-generation college student, my family was just so proud because I graduated. There was no expectation of a particular job after. I think that can be good in the sense that there’s nobody putting pressure on you, but it can also be difficult and leave you feeling uncertain when you lack guidance and connections.”

With Renée’s not knowing what she was going to do for a living, a friend who was living in the Dominican Republic suggested she move there and teach.

“I absolutely loved teaching science,” she said. 

Lyons returned to the United States, earned her master’s degree in teaching from Converse College and then taught at Berea High School for five years where she saw barriers in education and decided to pursue a Ph.D. in curriculum and instruction at Clemson. In one of her classes, she helped develop the curriculum for Clemson’s Science Outreach Center (SOC), the same center Lyons now runs. The center provides programming designed to make science accessible and relevant for K-12 students, teachers and community members.

“I remember thinking about the SOC and how amazing it would have been had I been able to attend when I was a kid. I might have realized I love science and I am good at it.” Lyons said.

As Clemson’s executive director of science outreach, Lyons’ goal is to show youth they too can excel at science and show how it’s accessible to them. She is leading a $1.9 million National Science Foundation-funded project, “My STEM My Story.” In this project Lyons has led the development of a graphic novel, “When Spiderwebs Unite,” which tells a true story of how scientific technology empowered an African American community to advocate for clear air and water. It will be distributed to students across the country through a partnership with the Urban League. The project also includes an after-school STEM club that empowers youth to use science to improve their own communities.

Prabha Ranasinghe

When she took an environmental toxicology course as an undergraduate student at the University of Kelaniya in Sri Lanka, Prabha Ranasinghe was struck with how biology and chemistry merged.

“I was fascinated by what adverse impacts chemicals could have on your biology, on your body, and how it can pass through to your offspring,” she said.

As a master’s student at the University of Illinois Chicago, she studied environmental chemistry and researched contaminants in Lake Huron.

“But it was always stuck in my mind that I wanted to be a toxicologist,” Ranasinghe said.

She received her Ph.D. in environmental toxicology from Clemson University. While there, Ranasinghe researched polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), specifically PCB 95. PCBs are synthetic chemicals that were used as insulating fluids in capacitors and transformers and were an ingredient in paints, plastics and hydraulic fluids. They were banned in the 1970s but are still found in the environment. Her research studied the toxicity of PCB 95 on the neurology of the model organism zebrafish.

Ranasinghe, who graduated from Clemson in 2020, now works as a regulatory scientist at Syngenta, a global science-based agriculture technology company.

“Instead of working with chemical toxicity, I’m working on protein toxicity,” she said.

Ranasinghe works with genetically modified crops. When a crop is genetically modified, scientists insert a new gene into the crop’s DNA sequence to enhance a quality such as improved insect or herbicide tolerance. But inserting a new gene into the plant could have unintended effects such as environmental or human toxicity. It’s Ranasinghe’s job to determine whether the new product will have any impact on non-target organisms, increase weediness or invasiveness, increase the gene flow, or cause allergenicity or toxicity on humans or livestock.

“Crop science was completely new to me, but even though it’s a crop, the principles of toxicology and risk assessment are there. We use the same chemical toxicology and risk assessment principles to assess the protein toxicity. Theoretically, it’s not different. Only the model is different,” she said.

Ranasinghe said the doctoral program at Clemson along with the close guidance from her advisors provided an unparalleled level of academic rigor and the necessary tools to excel in her current position.

“The opportunities were there if you wanted to rise,” she said. “That all sharpened me to where I am and to thrive wherever I go.”

Ranasinghe said the most satisfying thing is she’s still in the field of toxicology.

“This is my passion and what I am doing is helping the world. Hunger is a big problem in this world, and I’m proud of being part of Syngenta’s mission of helping feed the world safely and sustainably while taking care of the planet,” she said.

Susan Chapman

Susan Chapman credits her career in science partly to ignorance, youthful arrogance and perseverance. 

“When I decided to do a degree, I had no idea how universities worked. The British system is complicated, and I had been out of formal education for over eight years.”

After studying horticulture for a year at a small technical college in Cape Town, South Africa, Chapman moved to England, where she worked in retail — first at a garden center, then at a food and department store chain.

“I knew I couldn’t do that  for the rest of my life,” she said. 

That’s when she came across a prospectus for a neuroscience degree at University College London, one of five universities in the UK that offered such a degree. At her admissions interview, Chapman was asked why she applied only to University College. She replied that if she was going to apply, she wanted to apply to the best program. When asked what she would do if she wasn’t admitted, Chapman said, “I’ll just keep applying until you let me in.” She was one of only 10 students admitted to the program that year, starting her undergraduate degree at the age of 27. 

“I was very interested in how the brain developed. I was less interested in the psychology of how the brain worked; rather, I wanted to know the underlying biology of how a brain was built,” said Chapman, a developmental biologist and associate professor in the Clemson Department of Biological Sciences for 17 years.

Armed with the names of a few professors, Chapman looked for a lab in which to gain experience as an undergraduate. She called Professor Andrew Lumsden, a Fellow of the Royal Society and winner of the W. Maxwell Cowan Prize, and asked if he had a spot in his lab. Fortunately, he did.

“We were working with chicken embryos and cloning out genes that had roles in patterning the brain. Back in the day, cloning a gene was a big deal. It’s laughable now because today, we work with the entire genome, but at the time, it was cutting edge,” she said. “Chickens are great model organisms to work with because eggs are cheap and easy to get in large numbers. You can do all sorts of wonderful experiments with chicken embryos, such as transplanting tissues to determine what they do in a new position. You can watch embryos grow under the microscope.”

After she earned her Ph.D., Chapman did a postdoctoral fellowship in the lab of Professor Gary Schoenwolf at the University of Utah. 

Chapman chose Clemson for a professorship because it was “an up-and-coming university” with a vision for the future. 

She tells her students that determination and perseverance are essential to success in science. 

“I tell my students it takes a lot of grit, effort and perseverance to succeed in science. Developmental biology is a multimodal field and wet bench science is incredibly challenging. You learn the most when experiments fail. Failure is good because you are pushing the boundaries of knowledge, and if everything worked as expected, then you aren’t asking the right questions.”

Carrie Baumgardner

While she worked toward her undergraduate degrees in chemistry and biology at Wingate University, Carrie Baumgardner discovered her passion for physics research. 

Baumgardner enjoys the synthesis side of chemistry and the parasitology and microbiology side of biology, but she loves working in the field of physics. 

She was looking for an opportunity to combine all three of her interests in a Ph.D. when she discovered Clemson University’s burgeoning medical biophysics graduate program. The program focuses on understanding how fundamental physics principles underlie complex biological and medical phenomena and how the applications of those principles can be utilized to solve biomedical challenges.

Baumgardner, now a third-year Ph.D. student in the program, was one of three students admitted the first year. Another student joined the program last year. Now, in the third year for both Baumgardner and the program, many more prospective students are applying to join.

While she was hesitant at first about joining a new program, Baumgardner decided to apply anyway. 

“I figured it would be a great opportunity to help develop a program that could be rather big, given the lack of biophysics-specific programs in South Carolina. Clemson is the only university in South Carolina with a biophysics-specific program,” she said. 

Classes in the Clemson medical biophysics program are taught by different faculty members from various departments almost every week.

“We get to see an aspect of all of the different departments and learn a little bit about each one,” Baumgardner said. “Bringing together scientists with an individual understanding of a subject to study the same project produces significant achievements through combined knowledge.” 

Scientists who work in medical biophysics aim to resolve prominent medical issues by bringing STEM disciplines together to better understand disease and solve problems.

In her research, Baumgardner takes a biophysical approach to look at metabolism in parasites, mainly a class of organisms with a unique organelle called a kinetoplast, which harbors multiple copies of the organism’s mitochondrial DNA. Specifically, she studies leishmania, which causes leishmaniasis, and trypanosoma, which causes African sleeping sickness.

Baumgardner studies the parasites’ intake of sugar molecules and essential enzymes to see how they are utilized in the parasites’ metabolisms to learn how to better target and eradicate the parasites in hosts. She uses biosensors, specifically fluorescent microscopy, to monitor parasites’ interactions with their environment. The lab has recently focused on a specific enzyme called hexokinase, a distinct, six-membered figure that forms a hexamer structure versus most materials that create a dimer structure.

 “We’re interested in seeing how that affects its functionality, which will allow for better resolution of parasite metabolism,” says Baumgardner.

After finishing her Ph.D. in Spring 2027, Baumgardner plans to go into academia, conducting research projects and bringing a new biophysics course to an undergraduate institution to show future scientists how scientific fields can work together. 

Grace Pugh

Two skills Grace Pugh has definitely learned during her time at Clemson University are time management and discipline.

Pugh takes a full load of classes, conducts chemistry research, interns at the Science Outreach Center teaching elementary and middle school students, and competes as a Division I athlete on the women’s rowing team.

“My Google calendar is my best friend,” said Pugh, a senior chemistry major who has a minor in life sciences. “I have learned to plan things out hour by hour. You really learn to take advantage of those little bits of time in between things, even if it’s 45 minutes or an hour of downtime between classes.” Pugh, who grew up in California, took a few chemistry classes in high school and, thanks to an exemplary Advanced Placement chemistry teacher, found a passion for the subject.

“I loved the math behind all the chemistry concepts. I liked that there were patterns and trends and calculations,” she said. “There’s a common thread between all of my chemistry major friends, and that is we all had great chemistry teachers in high school.”

She started her college career at Azusa Pacific University, where she was a member of the school’s water polo team.

After transferring to Clemson for her sophomore year, Pugh saw a notice that the women’s rowing team was holding try-outs. One of her friends from home rowed in college and told Pugh she thought she would enjoy the sport, too. Although she had never touched an oar before, Pugh decided to give it a shot.

She made the team, putting her in the unique position of having to learn the sport while competing at the NCAA Division I level.

“Being able to learn a new sport is incredible. Feeling yourself improve and the frustration of not getting something and then working a little harder at it and then getting it, is very empowering and cool,” Pugh says. 

While a student at Azusa Pacific, she had a professor talked to her about getting involved in research.

After she arrived at Clemson, she joined Chemistry Professor Dan Whitehead’s lab.

Pugh’s work is part of a project researching African Sleeping Sickness, a parasitic disease passed through tsetse flies. The scientists are trying to find chemical compounds that are bioactive against the parasite.