Thriving as a deaf chemistry PhD candidate | Opinion

I was born profoundly deaf to deaf parents who moved from Pakistan to America before I was born. My sister is also deaf. As a family, we all speak Pakistani Sign Language, which I am fluent in, as well as American Sign Language (ASL).

Growing up in a school for the deaf in Massachusetts, I had no interest in science until high school. There, a deaf science teacher taught me sign language. Chemistry was very visual, and then it became clear that I was passionate about science. Later, in a mainstream high school with hearing peers, there were more opportunities to delve into chemistry, including organic chemistry, which was fascinating and intuitive for me.

When I enrolled at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) as a student, my original intention was to become a doctor or work in the medical field. Organic chemistry was a prerequisite for a premed major. It was a very difficult subject, taught by Christina Goudreau Collison, but I had a talent for it.

After graduating from RIT with a bachelor’s degree in biomedical sciences, I worked as a research assistant at Harvard Medical School for two years. Now I am in my third year of a PhD program in organic chemistry at New York University (NYU), focusing on organic synthesis and methodology development.

A new, universal lexicon for organic chemistry

A common misconception in the hearing community is that sign language is universal. ASL is used here in the US, but different countries have their own sign languages.

At RIT I was involved in a project, led by Professor Goudreau Collison, to create new signs for chemical terms and reactions. It started because several students in our course had varying degrees of deafness, and the professor spent a lot of time on fingerspelling.

The signs we developed are very visual. And they can be understood in different sign languages ​​because they represent how the chemistry happens and what’s going on with the molecules. They replace spelling reactions, which becomes difficult, while also allowing people who speak different languages ​​to communicate and understand chemistry.

I am the only deaf teaching assistant in NYU’s chemistry department

Working with other deaf students at RIT to express chemistry concepts in sign language also helped us learn the subject much better, and we all achieved top scores compared to the hearing students in the class. The professor noticed this and came to us to talk about it.

Together we realized this was a great opportunity, and the project only grew from there. The hearing students in our class also began using their hands to describe and understand chemical terms and reactions. They felt that the gestures were more useful than what they heard in lectures and what they read in the textbook because they summarized everything they needed to know, so they absorbed the material better.

Teaching the interpreters

I am very happy at NYU and work at the same level as my hearing colleagues. There is no difference except that I can’t hear and I use interpreters. I have access to everything I need at NYU, and my colleagues treat me equally.

My biggest challenge is finding qualified interpreters who can understand and convey complex organic chemistry. Sometimes I have to teach my interpreters – a responsibility that my hearing counterparts do not have.

After my PhD, I want to continue my research and perhaps also do some teaching.

Last semester I taught 16 students—all of whom are hearing—in an organic chemistry laboratory, with the help of an interpreter.

I am the only deaf teaching assistant in NYU’s chemistry department. Many people comment that my interpreters seem to know chemistry and ask if they can help me with the material. That’s frustrating. I explain that I am the expert and that my interpreters only translate from spoken English to ASL.

The boards I was involved with at RIT help me train my interpreters in chemistry. They are a great resource for them to study chemistry and learn to communicate independently.

Using an interpreter to teach in labs requires a lot of trust, because you cannot hear exactly what is being said. That’s why I usually ask students to repeat what I just said.

Each week I prepared the interpreters for each laboratory, compiling a handout on the laboratory procedures for the day. The interpreters would also review the cues for specific responses that will be taught and demonstrated.

Deaf people get a lot of pity from the hearing world, but we are fine and not broken. The things we do to adapt can even apply to hearing people.

Breaking and connecting bonds and transforming reactants into products are highly visual activities. We can easily imagine the molecules in our mind’s eye, and the way they are transformed reminds us of various hand movements in ASL. This learning method can also be useful for anyone who is not deaf and can help them learn chemistry.

As told to Rebecca Trager