You can tell from the way Dr. Al-Aakhir Ahad Rogers speaks about his work as a senior processing engineer at Draper Laboratory that he loves his career.
A 2011 recipient of a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of South Florida, Rogers, 30, regularly shares his passion for his profession with elementary school students. He explains to them how he makes sensory components used in items that range from laptop computers and gaming devices to airbags and seismographic equipment.
When he tells the students he makes gyroscopes, he uses an example they can all relate to — the Wii.
“I tell them I can make a device for a joystick,” Rogers said in a recent interview with Diverse.
Rogers is one of more than 5,000 young STEM scholars featured in a new 756-page National Science Foundation book titled “Underrepresented Minorities: A Rich Pool of STEM Talent. Who Will Do Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics in the Future?” A subtitle of the book seeks to answer that question as such: “5,000+ Young Stem Scholars Point to LSAMP!”
LSAMP is the acronym for the 21-year-old Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation. The program, currently funded at $45 million annually and serving some 220,000 students, supports what the NSF refers to as “sustained and comprehensive approaches to broadening participation (in STEM education) at the baccalaureate level.”
Rogers agreed that he owes his professional success to LSAMP. In fact, Rogers says, it was through LSAMP during his undergraduate years at North Carolina A&T State University that he was introduced to Dr. Ashanti Johnson-Turner, a pioneering African-American female oceanographer who recruited Rogers to attend USF through the Bridge to the Doctorate Fellowship program, which LSAMP also supports.
