Inspirational Women in STEM and Tech: Dr Amanda Randles of Duke University On The 5 Leadership Lessons She Learned From Her Experience

Learning to say no, and that it’s okay to say no. For example, we’re asking women to be on tons of committees to ensure diversity. However, it can be too much.

As a part of our series about “Lessons From Inspirational Women in STEM and Tech”, we had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Amanda Randles.

​​Amanda E. Randles, Ph.D., is the Alfred Winborne Mordecai and Victoria Stover Mordecai Assistant Professor of Biomedical Sciences at Duke University. Randles has made significant contributions to the fields of high-performance computing and vascular modeling. Randles is the recipient of the NSF CAREER award, the ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award, IEEE-CS Technical Consortium on High-Performance Computing (TCHPC) Award, the NIH Director’s Early Independence Award, and the LLNL Lawrence Fellowship. Randles was also named to the World Economic Forum Young Scientist List and the MIT Technology Review World’s Top 35 Innovators under the Age of 35 list. She holds 120 U.S. patents and has published 71 peer-reviewed articles.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

Everything in my life has led me to where I am now: the intersection of computer programming and biomedical research, and using large-scale supercomputers to answer biomedical questions. In high school, I had an amazing teacher that got me into programming. I went to a math and science center everyday and really enjoyed learning about computer programming and its application in the sciences.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began at your company (Duke University)?

The most interesting thing I’ve worked on at Duke University is developing patient-specific blood flow simulations, and creating 3D models based on medical imaging data.

We just finished a big clinical trial where we were comparing the results of our simulation to clinical data. We took an invasive guide wire in a patient, measured the pressure gradient in a stenosis, or in a narrowing in the vessel, and then compared it to the simulation result. We would have been really happy if we were within 10–15% of being accurate. And we ended up on the first pass being 6–8% accurate, enough for FDA approval.

The person leading this project was a phenomenal graduate student, who had put so many years and hard work into this research, and seeing it come to fruition was probably one of my most exciting times at Duke.

In a smaller vein, I also enjoy working on the biggest supercomputers in the world.

It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

When I was a graduate student, I was fortunate enough to go to an extreme scaling workshop and work on one of the biggest supercomputers in Europe. And one of the first things I did when I got there was crash the entire thing. The computer takes about half an hour to reboot, so no one else could do any work the entire time it was down.

Everyone was sitting there, calculating how much money I was costing them per minute by not having access to the computer. The amount was more than what I made in a year as a graduate student. I knew they were joking, but part of me was fearful, thinking please don’t send a bill to my advisor.

I was a second year graduate student and had no idea what I was doing. I think the biggest lesson I learned is “think before you do something.”

There are many implications of working on supercomputers. If you input a command to list all fields, you might have a file per processor, which could mean 200,000 files at time. Just typing the command to list all of those different files can lock your system for half an hour.

Now, I always make sure to think through the implications of my actions when working around supercomputers or anything with significant power.

What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?

I love Duke University. Every university says they support interdisciplinary research, and they want collaboration across schools, but Duke really means it, and they really do it.

I’m in a new engineering building right next door to the hospital. We can walk across the street and get real data and meet with the physicians. The students have the opportunity to go into the operating room or go into the cath lab and see how data is being acquired. When I teach my classes, I often have clinicians come and give guest lectures about what my students are learning in class and how the material can be applied in a real setting.

That wouldn’t be possible if the hospital was even a 20 minutes walk away. That proximity changes the dynamic of being able to have that collaboration between the engineering school and the medical school.

Also, Duke has active and engaged alumni, we always feel very supported and it’s a great community to be a part of.

I’ll always remember my interview at Duke. Duke’s big rival is Duke UNC, and in my job interview, they told me they were giving me a job offer and tickets to see the Duke UNC game that night. It was very magical.

Duke put me up at a hotel with a bar, and after the game, everyone was there. I saw Christian Leitner and all of the major NBA players that had come to attend the game. It was a great way of convincing me to come back to Duke.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

We just won the NIH Pioneer Award, which has opened up many new research directions for us. Everything I do is computational, everything is a dry lab, built on a code called Harvey, where we do three-dimensional blood-flow modeling.

But our new research ties into wearable devices. We’re moving past simulating a single heartbeat, or several heartbeats, and trying to develop new numerical and machine learning techniques. We’re asking ourselves if we can drive the simulations and the predictions from the wearable data connected to the 3D imaging data and get longer term hemodynamic maps.

This research would help with things like treatment planning for patients. So if the doctors are trying to identify what intervention they should undertake or what stent should they place, we can model not just how the body is going to respond to the stent tomorrow, but how lifestyle choices, like exercising an hour a day, can change blood flow patterns and impact what happens in the long-term.

The new research gives a more robust view of how patients are responding to treatment options in real time, as well as in a predictive manner.

Ok super. Thank you for all that. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview. Are you currently satisfied with the status quo regarding women in STEM? What specific changes do you think are needed to change the status quo?

It’s gotten much better, but there is a long way still to go. We’re seeing more women in leadership roles, and more diversity on committees and in people winning awards. More effort is being put in to ensure diversity, but there’s still not enough women.

We have a research tech in our lab who only graduated a year or two ago, and she had many classes where she was still the only female in her STEM-based classes.

In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges faced by women in STEM or Tech that aren’t typically faced by their male counterparts? What would you suggest to address this?

Just trying to be taken seriously. I had issues when I first started my lab, where I had male postdocs that were older than me. When the students would ask questions, they would turn to the male postdocs and ask them, even though it was my lab, lessons, and research direction.

I had to start enforcing authority by being referred to as Professor Randles instead of Amanda. I don’t think my male colleagues had to establish that authority with their students, it was already there. And men in STEM can be more laid back, more easy-going, and go by their first name, which is what I originally wanted to do.

Students tend to turn to the men in the room. I’ve definitely been in situations where I’ll say something and a man will repeat the same thing that I just said, and everyone listens to him and says that’s a great idea, and assumes it’s his idea.

Outside of the research lab, I also notice women having an overall tougher time. I have three young kids, and my husband is amazing and takes a lot of responsibility for our family. But at the same time, there are basic things like the assumption I would remain with my children at home, the toll that I had after childbirth, and trying to figure out how to balance work and home life.

I’ve had a lot of support through Duke and through the federal agencies where I have grants that have been incredibly supportive.

Duke has many nursing and pumping rooms. If a researcher has to travel, there are accommodations that are made, but it is harder being a mother, especially if you are nursing or need childcare. We’re seeing more and more child care available at conferences to make travel easier for people. The childcare at the conferences is not just for women, but the need for it tends to affect women more often.

And the last piece is making sure there’s always someone, who doesn’t have to be female, advocating for women and minorities on committees and on awards panels. The pool of who we’re looking at should be diverse, whether it’s for a job, an award, a promotion, anything. It’s important that we see women in these leadership roles and that the students have role models to look up to that represent themselves.

A big caveat of representation is the service burden. We do a great job of trying, even in just the parallel computing community, of trying to make sure that there is female representation on a lot of the committees. But then, since there are so few women in the STEM space, women end up being on way more committees, and that can be overwhelming and unsustainable.

What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about being a woman in STEM or Tech. Can you explain what you mean?

That women in STEM are the best at outreach and activity planning at conferences versus the technical papertrack. There was a period, when I was a younger researcher, that I was always asked to be in charge of outreach activities at conferences. Women are fully capable of doing the technical paper track. We do not always have to be at the center of the touchy, feely side of research. But we are often assigned more to those kinds of activities.

What are your “5 Leadership Lessons I Learned From My Experience as a Woman in STEM or Tech” and why. (Please share a story or example for each.)

1. Learning to say no, and that it’s okay to say no. For example, we’re asking women to be on tons of committees to ensure diversity. However, it can be too much.
2. Learning how to delegate. You have to find the right people to rely on. There shouldn’t be the mindset of “this will only be right if I do it.” You have to find the right people and trust them.
3. Communication. It’s important to communicate what you need. For example, I have twins. The policy is that you receive one semester of teaching off per birth, not per child. Childbirth and caring for children is hard enough, but having two young twins was a little crazy. I mentioned this to the other female faculty members at a Duke female faculty meeting, and they told me to ask for another semester off. They told me to go talk to my chair and ask for what I need. And within 3 hours, my chair gave me another semester off and relieved all of my stress. I wasn’t aware that I could advocate for myself in that way. Be comfortable asking for what you need, and be honest when you are stressed and need help.
4. Figure out what you’re passionate about and line up your goals. In our job, there are 5 million things you could be working on and they’re all worthwhile. But you need to figure out why you are in this job, what are you trying to do, and what you’re really passionate about. You want to ensure that you’re taking the steps to actually accomplish your goals.
5. Don’t be afraid to try new things and new ways of doing them.

What advice would you give to other women leaders to help their team to thrive?

Find ways to empower other people on your team, find out what they are passionate and excited about and what motivates them. Then, plug people into their strengths. Everyone is going to be more motivated and more excited if they’re working on something that actually drives them.

What advice would you give to other women leaders about the best way to manage a large team?

Learn how to delegate, learn what information you need and how to access it. There needs to be a lot of communication with your team of what your milestones and hard and soft deadlines are. Everyone needs to be on the same page.

Check in with your team frequently. Checking-in can help you quickly identify if someone is stuck or if someone needs help. Make sure your team also feels comfortable, and there is a system in place for them, to come to you and say “I’m stuck, I need help” without fear of getting in trouble.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

My two PhD advisors were amazing, and I wouldn’t even know about this research topic, how to go about doing it, or even how to run a lab, without them.

One researcher who came to a talk I gave back in 2010 on work I was doing in the cardiovascular space, made a comment of, “couldn’t you apply all this work to cancer?” And with single interaction we now have half of the lab working on cancer research. And it came out of that conversation; he single-handedly changed the direction of our research.

I collaborated with a researcher when I was back at IBM before I went to graduate school. He was a huge resource and a mentor. He helped me find the person who ended up being my PhD advisor. And without him, I don’t think I would have ever gotten into Harvard or found my research project.

And then in undergrad I had my research advisor, who’s from Duke. He has been a mentor for the last 25 years of my life, at every stage. He helped me with how to do research, get my first job, advised me of my career and schooling path, even helped me pick my roommate.

How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?

My and my team’s research in the health space has the ability to bring a lot of goodness to the world. We are trying to make something that will improve our ability to treat disease and our ability to diagnose disease. We want the result of this research to be translational and change how clinicians treat their patients.

In addition, I am a faculty member. I’m excited about my students, and I hope to inspire undergraduates and graduate students to do more research. I truly believe that they’ll go and do something that’s much more impactful than what I’ll ever do.

I want my students to be excited and see the potential of what they could possibly do. I always ask myself, how do we get them engaged? We do virtual reality projects and 3D printing projects, things that might spark excitement and interaction. I want to make lessons that are memorable so that students get excited about the potential of what they can do, and how they may do research in the future to improve the world.

You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

It is not necessarily a movement, but I want to use personalized models and personalized digital twins to improve health care. And also create wider acceptance and understanding of how computational models can help clinicians in the future, with a huge emphasis on helping the clinicians, not replacing them.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” — Wayne Gretzky. Often times the most exciting breakthroughs come from trying something a little out there. It’s important to be willing to try and know that it can fail. In our research, it often feels like there are many no’s before you get a yes and that can be discouraging. There have been many times where I’m applying to something and it would be easy to say it’s unlikely to be successful because I’m too young or they don’t tend to support computational work or other deterrents. At the end of the day, you definitely won’t achieve it if you don’t try and I have taken that to heart throughout my career. Some of the most rewarding experiences and projects have come out of just being willing to ask the audacious question and target high risk high reward projects.

We are very blessed that very prominent leaders read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them :-)

Tim Cook from Apple. I’m passionate about using advances in technology to improve healthcare and people’s day-to-day lives. At Apple they are developing cutting edge technology that is deployed at such a large scale. They are well positioned to innovate in the healthcare space, and I would love to talk about ways to integrate the high-resolution tracking devices they are creating to further augment our ability to find and treat disease. He is also a Duke alum which is always great to see.

Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.