Dr. Julie Yu is a Senior Scientist at the Exploratorium, San Francisco. Kindling our interest in science in a fun and engaging way is one way to describe Dr. Yu’s mission at the Exploratorium and the Teacher Institute. 

She really makes you think as you will observe in our conversation where she ignited our curiosity with a simple “genie in the bottle” experiment. Through these hands-on experiments Dr. Yu make you think really hard about the basic laws in science and apply them to help solve these puzzles. 

Dr. Yu’s  interest in science started at a young age in the kitchen when she was cooking noodles and wondered why the dough did not fall apart in boiling matter. That got her thinking about food and science. That interest in science propelled her to get an undergraduate degree at Brown University. She then relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area to teach math and science to middle school children. As a new teacher she realized the challenges of teaching science in a fun and engaging ways to middle school students and became involved with the Exploratorium’s Teacher Institute. She went on to get a PhD in Chemical Engineering from University of California, Berkeley and joined the Exploratorium as a research scientist. At the Exploratorium Dr. Yu  is constantly devising new and interesting ways to teach science.

This conversation is part of Season 2 of our TV series on #WomeninSTEM and highlights the role of “hidden figures” in Silicon Valley. In case you missed you can watch Part-1 of our conversation with Dr. Yu.

This 2-part episode with Dr. Julie Yu is sponsored by Genentech.

This interview aired and continues to air on PBS, Public Media and cable channels in the US.

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