Mansi: So Dr. Ikuma, thank you so much for joining us today. And thank you again for signing up for the project by Tracing Race. It's an initiative by library, ISU library, and the purpose of the project is going to be highlighting the experiences and contribution by female faculties across ISU campus. So, to just get started with, we would love to know more about your background, your journey so far in your field.
Dr. Kaoru Ikuma: So my name is Kaoru Ikuma. I am an associate professor in environmental engineering here at Iowa State. I actually was born in Japan, so I was born and raised in Japan, except for four years of my childhood when, My family was in the United States. So then we went back with their college. I went through high school and then realized that for college.
I wanted to come back to the United States to the U. S. So I've been in the U. S. for, uh, I probably shouldn't say how many years because that'll tell, that'll be, that'll make my, my age obvious, but anyway, for a number of years now. So I went through my education, most of my higher education in the U. S., I think.
So there's been, you know, multiple steps along the way where I had to decide what I wanted to do. I actually, I am in engineering right now, but I am not an engineer. by training. I am a biologist by training. I actually did biology and biochemistry for my undergraduate degrees, and then switched over to engineering, which is pretty rare.
I mean, you do see it, but it's rare. It makes it a little bit harder, and you get We'll talk about it later, but you can get more criticism from others about that. I made the switch from biology to engineering to environmental engineering, especially because I've always been interested in environmental things, but in particular, I realized as I was taking classes how important biology is to anything we do in the environment, of course, the human body and all those things too, but in particular within biology.
It's microbiology, the bacteria and the little stuff we can't see is really the powerhouse, everything, all the processes that happen in nature and a lot of processes that clean up things for us within environmental engineering. So that's how I decided to switch fields, and then of course, you know, the typical story of I didn't really know what I wanted to do within environmental engineering.
I tried it out. I then, as I was doing my master's degree, I realized I really enjoyed research. So finding new things and making those discoveries and then really, you know, getting down to the nitty gritty details was something that I really enjoyed. So that made me want to do a PhD. I switched institutions for my PhD, but then, you know, research as a career means a lot of potential different paths.
And then, so I was trying to think about that during my PhD, what I realized about more than halfway through was that, yes, I liked research, but more than research, I actually really enjoyed mentoring and having mentoring relationships with people. So that culminated into me realizing that academia was probably correct as a correct or suitable, there you go, suitable for me.
So then it went on to do. Postdocs, two postdocs to just get more experience and branch out my research areas and then ultimately came here to Iowa State. So I came here in 2015. I've been here, this is my eighth year. Wow. I'm finishing up my eighth year. I got tenure last year and have been doing a lot of things on the teaching front and the research front and having a lot of fun.
Mansi: Oh, wow. That was a story. Well, so you just mentioned like how you switched your entire gears towards engineering. So what on the first place actually motivated you to be in this field? If you want to look like
Dr. Kaoru Ikuma: that. Yeah, absolutely. It was actually a class. Right. Classes actually have impact on people. At least we want to think that right, on the education side.
It was a class, it didn't really, it wasn't a direct line to engineering, but I basically I fell in love with the discipline of microbiology. And then environmental microbiology is so, so, so deep that, and there's so much we don't know that that's what got me. into the field, first of all, but then as I started learning about environmental engineering and doing things within it, I realized that what we do in environmental engineering supports everyday life for everyone, and it supports well being, health, it's really a life, living, life, life or death thing that we deal with.
So we are behind The fact or behind the screens that allow people to open their taps, get water and drink it straight, right, they don't have to think about it. There are countries in which you cannot do that. Absolutely. But, you know, we are, environmental engineering is what allows us to do things that we take for granted, that protect us way more than we realize.
So that's the part that Got me really excited, and then on top of that, when I was in Japan, I experienced a big earthquake. There was a very large earthquake of 95, 1995, that devastated our area. My house itself stood. It was a little bit crooked, but it stood. So that was okay, but we actually lost, we lost electricity for about 10 hours.
The electricity came back fairly quickly. We lost running water for two months. To homework. And for someone who, you know, was in Japan, a very developed country, where all these things were taken for granted, that was a very different experience. So not having water, and how very difficult it is to get clean water, was something that Always stuck with me and then kind of came back full circle when I started learning about environmental engineering and I realized that I wanted to be one of the people who are in the behind the scenes supporting society.
Mansi: Yeah, you just made me think because I, even though I'm doing my master's, my area is in business, nothing related to engineering or environment or microbiology. And I never thought that environmental engineering is behind a lot of things we do on a day to day basis. I mean, I wish people told us, probably there should be an intro class for all the undergraduates, like what all the fields do.
It's
Dr. Kaoru Ikuma: actually tricky, right? If you think about it. There is some level of invisibility that is not a bad thing. If, if every person has to think, Oh, is this safe? Oh, can I do this? You know, is this going to affect, you know, is this going to lead to me dying? That's not a good society that really hinders Transcribed Progress.
So I think there's a need for some of this to be in the background and visible to people, they don't have to think about it. But at the same time, when something goes wrong. It, it becomes a huge. Oh, and recently we've had It's been on the news, a lot of crises, water crises and such have happened. People cannot, it's hard for society to deal with it when everything was invisible before.
Yeah. So the balance of invisibility and taking for grantedness and knowing what goes on and being able to trust that we know what we're doing is something we're actually really talking about as a field.
Mansi: Yeah, no, that's, yeah, that's eye opening for me. So, well, you shared with us what motivated you, and then, you know, like, I would really like to know what do you think, what makes you stand out when you come into this field, specific your field, or maybe let me reframe the question, what perspective As a woman of color, Asian woman, you bring to your particular field or generally in a STEM field.
Dr. Kaoru Ikuma: I think it's the diversity of thought. Okay. We, well, I shouldn't even say we, everyone's thinks differently. I have had many situations where I'm like, wow, I think differently than a lot of my male colleagues. And that's a good thing. Okay. If they're willing to listen, that's a good thing. If we're good at.
Communicating that effectively, that diversity of thought is a good thing, and I think it's, it's that, it's our perspective that tends to be different, but I think it's, it's important across STEM fields, but I really feel it in environmental engineering because we're so tied into society and tied into human health and well being that our perspective as women and women of color, women who See the world a little bit differently is important to consider and important to be heard.
Mansi: Absolutely. And that's why we are here. We want your contributions to be heard. So, well, the, as we are talking about contributions, could you share any memorable achievements which you would like to share on this platform with our audience? Any particular research, or it can be more than one, like, It's open ended, so
Dr. Kaoru Ikuma: go ahead.
You really don't want me talking about this for the last 15 minutes. I would say one major theme that I have throughout my research and also part of my teaching is, and it's a little bit more recent that I've been able to focus on this, but is water justice. And equity and water security. So it ties back to my experience as a, as a kid going through the two months of no, no running water.
What security in water, water access, and being able to trust that your, your running water is indeed safe for you to use is should be at the foundation. of human society. If you have to worry about all these things, again, like I said, you can't make progress. So, but in reality, that's not the case.
Throughout the world, you, and a lot of people, you know, we tend to want to think that, oh, the U. S. doesn't have that problem, but we do. We absolutely do. Water security is a problem. Water insecurity is what we see more frequently than we'd like to see. And it's going to be exacerbated by climate change, it's going to be exacerbated by political decisions, all these things, we won't go into the politics here but, you know, it's, it's engineering, it's natural process, we'd like to mimic natural processes and what we do, and, you know, build engineering infrastructure for it, but ultimately, who runs it, who makes decisions.
is people. People are essentially the bottleneck of what we do. The engineering we figured out quite a bit of, but if it's not operated correctly, if the decisions are off, then All the designing and planning we've done will not be useful. So, so tackling that is really has been my passion for the last few years.
And looking at it from a marginalized community's perspective, are we really thinking about Water treatment and environmental engineering in the right way is something that I'm trying to question through my research and teaching as well. Are we really targeting, when we tend to design things, we tend to think of healthy adults as the main part of the population.
Which, which is true. The main popular part of the population is going to be helping people, but we leave the vulnerable people behind. We do take into account a safety factor that encompasses some of the vulnerable population. But not all. So, so, so there's a lot there that I am currently working on for water insecurity, water quality, including things like pathogens and such, and decision making surrounding water.
So, ironically, I'm in engineering, but I'm really more passionate now about research that bridges the STEM fields, a lot of the STEM fields together, but also with the humanities and social sciences. Okay.
Mansi: Yeah, and that is. Amazing. I mean, like, who would have thought and I don't think like students in oftentimes, especially undergraduates understand how they can do a lot of things, even though if they're in one field, right, like, I meet a lot of engineering students and they have this one mindset, they are like, yep, this is what I'm going to do, you know, like I'm going to work for this company.
That's it. My life goal. You can only
Dr. Kaoru Ikuma: design things and, you know, do the engineering calculations. Right, right. Yeah, yeah. I try to incorporate that into my teaching. To prepare students because at some point in their career, they will see it, they will feel it. Yeah, I want to get them prepared and start thinking about the human aspect early, rather than late, because it's too late, if there is a crisis, if an engineer does something wrong, and it kills people.
It's too late. We cannot afford
Mansi: that. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for sharing that wonderful insight. I just wanted to show you talked about water justice and your research work you are doing right now. So just to share with our audience, I am the digital platform will also have this interview, but along with that, a profile.
So do you have any links you can share with me, or like, is everything your research work in the profile on the website of ISU, which I can use?
Dr. Kaoru Ikuma: It is not, so I should probably use it. Share some links. The, I guess we can communicate over email what kind of links would be most useful. It could be abstracts of projects that are ongoing.
I don't, we don't really, we need to have a website, but we don't have a website. Like a website that's dedicated for this.
Mansi: Okay. Yeah, we can communicate that through email for sure. Perfect. So moving on and changing a little bit gears. So you talked about your achievement. Were there any challenges while you were accomplishing what you did?
And you can, you can just touch broadly over it. It depends on how confident you're
Dr. Kaoru Ikuma: y. Yes. Uh. I'd like to believe that everyone has challenges, right? And everyone overcomes those challenges. I will say that, particularly being Asian and being a woman, have slightly different challenges associated with them.
Right, so being Asian in a STEM field, in academia, we are actually not underrepresented. We are, you know, we're a minority in the general population here in the United States, but we are not underrepresented. So we tend to be, it's easy. So, so, so there's that side where there's too much of us is what some people might tend to think, apparently.
So I've gotten comments about that. Our names are different. In fact, most people would not know whether I'm a female or male or, you know, my I'm a male. gender, just looking at the name. Of course, gender is more complicated than that, but, but that there's a big uncertainty that puts off people, although admittedly in Japanese, my name could be either male or female, but that's neither here nor there.
So, so being Asian, there's that, you know, just being different makes it a little bit. You, you get, you just get small comments along the way, and I'm fairly certain that, you know, some job applications. I probably wasn't looked at carefully because I was different, and that's implicit bias. Being a woman, you get a little bit more explicit microaggressions along the way.
And I think a lot of people, a lot of women in STEM have unfortunately experienced that. One of the, the, the, the Things that I remember to this day, and it was several years ago, was especially in a field like, you know, in a type of job like academia, we have so in academia, there are tenure track jobs.
that open up, they get posted, you get a ton of applicants, and then from the applicants you get a short list, you do phone interviews or something typically, and then only a few people get invited for on campus interviews. So it's a, it's a process and it's very competitive, especially in recent years. So after I've gotten this job and been in this job, I have had comments from Male colleagues, even well meaning male, you know, friends in academia that say, Oh, but it was, it must've been easy for you to get this job because you're a woman.
That still grates me. Cause it's like, yeah, this is why we have not progressed as much as we should be progressing. But anyway. I'll leave it at that. Okay.
Mansi: Yeah. No. Thank you so much. It's probably the most hard and difficult talks to have, but thank you so much for sharing the honest and transparent experience you had here and in your STEM field overall.
So in terms of, as you mentioned, you are here on campus from last eight years. And before that you were in this field for a long time now, so have you changed, have you seen any changes taken place in DI in terms of diversity in the field? In terms of have we progressed? Probably my question is that have we progressed in the last few years?
Dr. Kaoru Ikuma: I think so. Visi, like visually, if you would, or visibly we see more students of color. Because we are putting effort into that. So that's a good thing. So I do think there is conscious effort in increasing diversity. What I do, and I guess you asked if there is progress, I'd say yes. Is there plenty of progress?
No, but it's a, it's a process.
Mansi: Is there a particular thing or something which you feel like is still lacking or if given a choice you will integrate that?
Dr. Kaoru Ikuma: So, it's, it's a, it's a challenge across a lot of different industries and a lot of different places. When we think about diversity, we tend to think about, like, visual things.
Oh, you look different, you're a different color, you're a different gender, you know, you, even you talk different. That's not look, but you know, it's, it's things that you can sense easily. Yeah. I do think that it's more than that, that we need to really foster, and it's that diversity of thought, of background, of opinions, but in a meaningful way.
So, and that's really, really difficult to do. Really difficult to do. And then on top of that, even if you get the diversity as such, if you don't have that inclusive environment, there's a reason why we talk about diversity, equity and inclusion together. If it's not inclusive, those opinions, those diversity of thought, the differences will be buried.
People, even the people who look different, sound different, will try to act the same. That's not what the point is. We are, that is entirely missing the point. I don't, I think it's okay for people to look the same but have different opinions. That's actually even more important or, you know, will help a lot.
So how do we posture those differences more broadly? And How do we open up people's minds to, to want to do it? And, you know, doing training with different groups of people is a start, but obviously it's not the only thing that we can do. So, and I think it takes a much bigger conscious effort from all the way from, you know, in a college situation like this from undergraduate students.
Or even prospective students coming in, all the way to, you know, grad students, and professional students, but also faculty, staff, parents, industry partners, everyone involved, that this is what we Emphasize and this is what is important to us. I think needs to be very clear, clearly articulated more. Yeah,
Mansi: I'll keep that line from your answer you mentioned that it's okay to look the same but have different thoughts.
That was so profound, and I, I definitely like, yeah, that's true, like, it's okay to have different thoughts even though it. Yeah, I think a lot of it's okay to have different thoughts. That's a good thing. Absolutely. I
Dr. Kaoru Ikuma: think it's, it might be easier for me to say that because I come from a uni racial country.
We all look the same back home, but we all say different things. And that's normal. We're all different people. Let's celebrate that. Yeah,
Mansi: yeah. Well, thank you so much. I'll keep that in mind. Well, to kind of wrap up our interview session, what would be that one advice you would give to young, aspiring young women entering STEM field?
Dr. Kaoru Ikuma: I think it's that, remember that you're unique.
Don't worry about the labels, right? Don't worry about, oh, you're Asian or you're a woman or whatever. It's that you're unique and that you bring something unique to the table. Whatever you look, however you look, however you sound. And that is important. We want to hear it. We want to have you. I think that's what I want to make sure that everyone remembers.
Absolutely.
Mansi: Well, that was a good energy boost for me this morning. Excellent.
Dr. Kaoru Ikuma: Yeah.
Mansi: Well, I hope you had a good time in terms of interacting with me. And yeah, once again, thank you so much for like signing up for this. I am looking for more and more people to sign up, more faculties to sign up because this is my aim is to tell stories.
Yeah. Well, what is better than listening directly from you as a woman faculty to tell stories what you have given to this university, even to the field, your own field, and how the next generation can learn from it and progress and be confident in terms of what they're going to bring to the table. As you mentioned, it doesn't matter what you look or how you sound.
It's important you bring your own uniqueness to the table.
Dr. Kaoru Ikuma: No, I really, again, I love this project so I'm very excited that you're doing it. I'll, I'll let other Asian women faculty I know. that this is happening.
Mansi: Yeah. Yeah. I have tried my best to pull a list from the website. Like it's not helpful that we have like a set of like a file where I can actually go and be like, Hey, this is all the people I can contact.
So I, I tried my best and reached out most of them, but you never know if. Even if there are people, you know, faculties, you know, who have retired, if they would like to contribute to the project, I will be open to do so.
Dr. Kaoru Ikuma: Okay. Oh, you know, women, faculty and engineering are not that plentiful. And then women, faculty and engineering who have, who are at the age that they have retired are also far less, they're rare.
So. Maybe not that, but I'll, I'll try to get the word
Mansi: Out. Absolutely. And thank you so much again, Dr. Ikuma, for being part of this project. Oh,
Dr. Kaoru Ikuma: my pleasure. Thank you so much for your time.
Mansi: Yeah. Thank you so much. Okay. Have a great day. You too. Bye.