IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - December 2016 - 13

Today, Sandler sees traits in Clippinger that "any good
scientist, and especially someone advocating for good science, would need," describing her as extremely intelligent,
very precise, persistent, and compassionate. "The reason she
was oringinally hired as our science advisor and then became
associate director of our department is because she has great
ideas," Sandler says.
Clippinger and the other scientists at PETA use workshops, webinars, funding, and the sharing of their own
research to solidify PETA's role in regulatory toxicity testing.
They offer different awards and prizes to drive innovation.
In 2014, they partnered with MatTek, a company that makes
three-dimensional (3-D) tissue constructs out of human
cells. Through this partnership, MatTek offered free tissues
to those who submitted a short abstract with a plan for tissue
use. This, Clippinger says, got people thinking about what
they could do with these tissues that they may never have
thought about otherwise, and the response was a diverse
blend of companies and academic researchers.
Soon after the MatTek partnership, Clippinger began to
plan the nanotech workshop. She aimed for a specific focus
and a tangible goal: this workshop would end with a call for
proposals for a US$200,000 grant toward the development of a
new nonanimal nanotechnology test.

On the Right Path
This is how collaboration happens in the 21st century. Clippinger and PISC coworker Dr. Monita Sharma first organized
the nanotech workshop. Sharma was the perfect partner for
this project: she has a background in nanotechnology, holds a
Ph.D. degree, and completed her thesis at Wright-Patterson
Air Force Base. Her specialty focises on in vitro methods to
assess nanotoxicology.
Clippinger and Sharma decided to focus the workshop on
finding a humane high-tech replacement for the rat inhalation test, a systemic toxicity test in which rats
are forced into tubes and subjected to an
airborne substance for hours a day over
a period of 90 days. The EPA invited
PISC to hold its workshop in its Washington, D.C., offices, and the workshop
was attended by worldwide experts from
government, industry, academia, and nonprofit institutions.
Barbara
Among the workshop participants were
Rothen-Rutishauser
scientists Prof. Barbara Rothen-Rutishauser and Prof. Vicki Stone. Rothen-Rutishauser earned her
Ph.D. degree in cell biology from the Swiss Federal Institute
of Technology and has spent the last five years in a successful
work-share partnership with another female scientist, Prof.
Alke Fink, in the position of cochair in BioNanomaterials at
the Adolphe Merkle Institute at the University of Fribourg in
Switzerland. In 2007, Rothen-Rutishauser spent a sabbatical
at Stone's lab at the School of Life Sciences at Napier University of Edinburgh.

Innovation is
everywhere.
So are we.
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - December 2016