Feb. 1 marks the start of Black Histories and Futures Month. Black Histories and Futures Month is a relatively new approach to Black History Month. This new vision, introduced by Movement 4 Black Lives in 2015, facilitates the intentional action of looking at the past, acknowledging the struggles, and achievements, of Black communities, while promoting an equitable future, continued accomplishments, and a commitment to ongoing education. Queen’s University is celebrating the month with a number of events. We will be spotlighting some of our current and past black identifying undergraduate and graduate students.
Nathalia Rosalle (Left) an undergraduate from the Engineering Chemistry Program and Fredrick Bulondo a PhD student
in Chemical Engineering.
Nathalia Rosalle, a 5th year Engineering Chemistry student, always knew she wanted to help people but thought that would take her down the path of traditional healthcare. It was not until a teacher in high school told her she had a mindset for engineering that she started to explore the option. She chose the Engineering Chemistry program because she was excited by the opportunity to have more hands-on experience and lab time. She liked getting exposure to classes in Chemistry and being able to receive a well-rounded deeper understanding beyond chemical process’ as a whole. She found that this was especially useful during her 12-month internship with Thermo Fisher Scientific in Pharmaceutics and Process Technology.
After her internship, Nathalia knew she wanted to explore research in academia. She had a passion for the environment and wanted to explore sustainable materials. She initially reached out to Dr. Marianna Kontopoulou who was starting a collaboration with new faculty member Dr. Kevin De France. Natahlia completed an NSERC URSA project this past summer and is now a 5th year thesis student. Her project focuses on the chemical modification of cellulose nanocrystals to improve their compatibility with Polylactic acid (PLA) blends. As is, PLA is quite brittle and has less than ideal properties. Combining with cellulose nanocrystals (CNC) will improve the properties and create an overall biodegradable plastic since both PLA and CNCs are biodegradable.
“The end goal is to try and make a sustainable plastic material or bioplastics, something that is biodegradable,” says Nathalia.
Although she very much enjoyed her internship in the pharmaceutical industry, Nathalia realized how much she enjoys teaching. She has teaching experience already, including currently teaching coding at the Boys & Girls Club. During her internship, her colleagues noticed during a Grade 9 visit day what a natural educator she was. She hopes to use science and engineering to inspire kids from a young age, especially black youth.
Nathalia is also the President of the Queen’s Chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE). NSBE is a non-profit organization founded in 1975 with over 16,000 active members in their 500 chapters around the world. Their mission is to increase the number of culturally responsible Black Engineers who excel academically, succeed professionally and positively impact the community. The Queen’s chapter of NSBE is relatively new and provides academic support, professional development, a mentorship program, and an overall sense of belonging and community for Black students. They host events, workshops and access to resources that are specific to Black Engineers.
“There are a lot of cases where black engineering students are the first person in their family to pursue engineering or even attend university,” says Nathalia. “It is difficult if you’re the only one.”
In her first year, Nathalia doesn’t recall much happening for Black Histories and Futures Month. As part of NSBE, one of her goals is to increase awareness and hold more events. They have posters up around campus and sticker sales with profits donated to specific charities related to the club. She thinks improving Black History Month can be as simple as making small efforts, by having educational events and pieces in local media as a means of reflecting on what’s happened and how to improve the future. Nathalia noted a big challenge is that creating support and a sense of community mostly falls on the students. Support and mentorship from Faculty and higher up is necessary to have a significant impact.
“Other people who have that willingness to learn, to build that community together, connect with others. I think in that sense having those supports can bring more people from diverse backgrounds to Queen’s.”
Fredrick Bulondo, a PhD candidate in Chemical Engineering was also more geared towards a career in medicine, until he discovered Biomedical Engineering. Through his undergraduate degree at Makerere University in Uganda, he was inspired and received mentorship that allowed him to pursue opportunities abroad. In his home country of Uganda, biomedical engineering is a fairly new field and currently there is a lack of expertise and facilities to support its growth. He received a prestigious Fullbright Scholarship in 2020 (valued at $100,000 USD) to pursue a Master’s of Science in Bioengineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His project here aimed at developing a biomaterial system that uses a hydrogel carrier to deliver immunomodulatory Dendritic cells for amelioration of autoimmunity. He recently published in the Journal of Biomedical Material Research: Optimization of interleukin-10 incorporation for dendritic cells embedded in poly(ethylene glycol) hydrogels.
It was through his Master’s that he connected with Dr. Lindsay Fitzpatrick at Queen’s. His PhD research is establishing an in vitro model of a foreign body reaction on chip, which combines an established 2D macrophage-material interaction model with 3D fibroblast-laden collagen microtissues in a perfused microfluidics system.iHis
“To put it simply, we know our body is meant to protect us from foreign things, sometimes an implant put into your body can be rejected. My research is exploring how we can tune the body to not reject implants like this. We are testing the platform in vitro before the implant goes into the human body,” says Fredrick.
Only in the second year of his PhD, Fredrick is keeping his options open career-wise. He has an interest in moving towards industry. He wants to learn about research and development in industry, especially for the growing field of biomaterials and biomedical engineering. Before beginning his Master’s, he did some teaching including as an Assistant Lecturer at the Mbarara University of Science and Technology in Uganda.
Fredrick has seen his transition from Uganda to the US and Canada as a good opportunity, indicating his love for adventure, exploring the unknown, and learning about different cultures and how they do things differently. He notes that there are many challenges, including the vast difference in weather and temperature, but also how people do things differently.
“Back home in Africa, we have a completely different culture in how we interact with people and how you express yourself, which is quite different from what I see here and what I experienced in the US,” says Fredrick. “Although I’m still getting used to it, one of the things I love about the environment here is the ability to express yourself freely.”
Fredrick is also involved in the Black Youth in STEM program at Queen’s, an engineering focused education outreach program that creates a student-centered learning environment to engage black identifying children using fun interactive activities to foster a deeper understanding and love for STEM. The aim is to increase black scientists and engineers in Canada. He found this to be a very intriguing experience, and that the students were not aware of opportunities in engineering especially in Kingston but were very willing to engage in such programs. When he was training them in basic experiments (i.e. designing small biomaterials), he found they really enjoyed the hands-on aspect.
“Most of them were like ‘I want to be like you, I want to do what you’re doing, maybe in 10 or 5 years’, that got me inspired,” says Fredrick. “It’s great to see that they have someone they look up to, especially if they are black identifying. I’m looking forward to doing more of this when the chance comes up.”
He thinks that Black Histories and Futures Month should have more people engaging and interacting with each other including black identifying as well as allies. Organizing programs that would invite people to engage more in interactions would be something that would be a major highlight.