Elevating your career path and ambitions with Esmeralda Bukuroshi - COVID Response Operations Lead
Esmeralda Bukuroshi completed her PhD in chemical engineering at the University of Toronto, specializing in material engineering for organic solar cells. During her PhD, she developed an interest in science policy and explored roles leaning more toward science advocacy. With her previous co-op experience as a chemist at Nova Chemicals, she went on to take a role as a Senior Analyst for more than a year before joining her current role as a Lead of COVID Response Operations at Ontario Health.
As a fellow co-op student myself, I had the pleasure of connecting with Esmeralda to learn more about her inspiring journey and future aspirations. Check out the full interview below!
**This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Simply because it is a COVID role, no two days are the same. That's exciting, but also nerve-wracking at the same time because we receive urgent requests related to COVID and other respiratory illnesses that are constantly changing across Ontario. Ontario Health itself is the health system operator. We operationalize guidance or plans that the Ministry of Health is envisioning for Ontario in terms of the health system. We get to work very closely with the Ministry of Health, so that's the government aspect. We also get to work directly with the field (for example, hospitals, community service agencies and so on), and we (Ontario Health) are in between. We get to see what the field is doing, but we also know what the requirements are from the government, and we get to shuffle information back and forth and make sure that recommendations and feedback are looped back into the ministry and vice versa. Other responsibilities involve stakeholder engagement and risk mitigation planning where I am constantly talking to various health system partners about their experiences with the various programs that we have in place.
My role was a little bit unique as a Senior Analyst because I was doing research on testing technologies for COVID. The research methodologies I learned during my PhD are the main attributes that landed me this job. Typically a senior analyst role is very much an individual contributor role, where you get to work with either a lead or a manager on very specific tasks and you track your progress on each task on a regular basis; being the lead is different because you oversee more projects and have more accountabilities. The transition was definitely a huge learning curve simply because my background was in solar panels but also because I joined a new team, I had a new superior and my responsibilities were vastly different. So, the learning curve was apparent.
I think the greatest challenge for me has been finding my niche in the science policy space. Although I really liked the idea behind science policy work and how impactful it may be and that it made sense to me given my background and personality, I didn't know if I could do it. I had experience in research, and I know how to communicate science, but I just didn't have experience on the policy side. This is exactly what Ontario Health is helping me with to this day.
When I joined Ontario Health, I was nervous about communicating science to program developers and policymakers. Sure, I had simplified my PhD topic to others who were not in my specific area of research, but they were all academics at the end of the day. Fast forward a few years: I can say that with time and practice, I overcame that fear, and now I'm able to communicate various scientific principles to people from various backgrounds.
Start networking earlier! I started networking during my PhD, and I was quite intentional about it from the beginning simply because I just wanted to know what someone could do with a PhD. Throughout the various events that I was organizing throughout my PhD, I came across people who had started one thing and ended up doing something completely different, which was an eye-opener for me. It’s important to be open-minded when talking to people about their career paths. And what better place is there than an alumni event with people who graduated from the program that you're enrolled in? And what better way than to learn from them about their path?
So definitely start networking as early as possible. You will lose nothing; you will gain a wealth of knowledge.
I think it all started with my co-op placement at Nova Chemicals as a chemist. I got to do a lot of applied chemistry there, and I found it absolutely amazing. I wanted to do research the moment I got back, so I finished my undergraduate program with a thesis project in inorganic chemistry and I loved it. I was very excited to continue on with the research in applied chemistry. I came across Professor Bender in the Department of Chemical Engineering at U of T, who is a chemist by training. His research focus is quite exciting because he brings onboard chemists as well as chemical engineers to work together on developing solar panel materials and testing their capability within solar panels for improved efficiency. So, the chemical engineering department felt like the right place for me, and it ended up being so much more simply because I was able to get involved with a lot of student groups there that further fuelled my passion for student advocacy and introduced me to the science policy space.
During your graduate studies, you were an advocate for other graduate engineering students as part of the Toronto Science Policy Network. What motivated you to take on this volunteer role?
These are student groups that are put on by students for students, so your involvement can be as much as you want it to be, and you can advocate for students in so many ways. I found my strength in the communication piece, so that’s how I contributed to these student groups. But there's so much other important work behind the scenes, like drafting and editing funding letters, event executive summaries, etc. So there are many ways you can get involved to be part of the solution. And it doesn't have to be as outspoken as my case was — I know that's not for everyone.
We published two research papers related to my PhD work. A few fellow researchers built on some of my PhD findings and this year we felt that it was comprehensive for a publication. In addition, I did an exchange program for six months in Copenhagen during my PhD, and the second half of that work was also recently published in the European Journal of Chemistry. This work was very collaborative and spanned across various laboratories, so it's just really exciting to see it out there so it can be accessed by other researchers.
Well, I think networking has been my best lever, and it continues to be. I am a huge believer in networking. You get to learn about others’ career paths to date and what inspires them to carry on, and to move further. And so, learning about different paths and new opportunities keeps me excited about the work that lies ahead. Like I said, I want to go back into the energy sector, but is it the right time? I find the work I'm doing at Ontario Health very impactful. And just hearing some of the feedback from the field, like the hospitals, with regards to some of the programs that we've put in place and the difference that that work has made to the community – it's so rewarding. But I think learning from different people is what keeps me motivated to continue learning in my career.
I would have to say chlorine and it's simply because of some of the findings from my research. I studied the impact of halogenation on this one molecule (the active material that goes into a solar panel), which has hydrogens around it. We found that surrounding the molecule with chlorine atoms lowers the energy levels sufficiently to improve the performance of these solar cells. Fluorine on the other hand, which is a more electronegative halogen, did not improve the performance of the solar cells significantly.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
How was your transition from Senior Analyst to your current role?
What is the greatest challenge you have overcome throughout your career path?
If you could travel back in time and tell yourself one piece of advice, what would it be?
What inspired you to study Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry?
What’s one thing you’re working on now that you’re particularly excited about?