At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dani Rojas was under tremendous pressure at work. The young Abbott Laboratories engineer was charged with keeping the company’s COVID diagnostic equipment up and running 24/7.
As the subject matter expert on the equipment, anytime it went down, she was called. “It didn’t matter if it was 3 a.m., I was there,” she said. “I had T-minus two hours to fix whatever was wrong or the CEO would be notified.”
Rojas, 29, who graduated from FIU in 2018 with a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from the College of Engineering and Computing, recently received the Outstanding Achievement Award in the Technology Rising Star category at the annual Women of Color STEM conference. The awards showcase excellence and innovation and the under-representation of diverse women in scientific and technical fields.
“The industry is still very male-dominated and it makes you feel as if you have to work twice as hard to succeed,” Rojas said. “It was gratifying just to be nominated for the award, and receiving it was awesome.”
Read more at FIU News.