Patty Quarton

When both of your parents are optical physicists, your childhood is not going to be boring. My mom and dad often brought me and my sister to their laboratories while they performed experiments. After school, my daily life consisted of being entertained by diffraction patterns projected onto walls and taking naps in darkrooms while films developed. As children do, I emulated my parents back at home by setting up my own “laboratory” where my main project was to create a vacuum chamber by persistently reengineering my pet fish’s oxygenator. I also dabbled in my own version of biology where, during rainy seasons in Mexico, I would compassionately rescue tadpoles that were stranded in puddles and rehouse them in our bathtub. That’s just how it was around our house, I was always planning my next big experiment!

The persistence and curiosity of my childhood drove me to pursue my scientific career, where I became one of the first females in Mexico to graduate with a degree in nanotechnology and molecular engineering from the Universidad de las Américas, Puebla. From there, I went on to earn an MS in materials science and engineering and a PhD in chemistry from the University of Texas at Dallas.

Working at Lyndra brings all these different parts of my life together. The people here are always curious, always passionate and always persistent. Developing a new dosage form is not going to be easy, but we all know that we are not going to give up until we reach our goal – to improve the lives of people all around the world. Often, when I come to work, I think about a poem from one of my favorite Argentinian poets, Almafuerte. This is the first paragraph from “Piu Avanti”

No te des por vencido, ni aun vencido;

Note sientas esclavo, ni aun esclavo;

Tremulo de pavor, piensate bravo;

Y arremete feroz ya malherido.

English translation:

Do not surrender even when defeated,
and do not be a slave even in bondage,
trembling with fear advance bravely,
and attack with fury, though badly wounded.