Hiranya Peiris

I remember applying to so many different jobs and I accumulated the rejection letters in a binder.

I still have that somewhere to remind me that rejection is OK.

Eventually, I got into a scheme called the Ear in Industry at Nuclear Electric, which ran the UK's nuclear reactors at the time.

And I was placed in a team which was monitoring the turbo generator system for cracks and

There was not a woman in sight.

And I was a young woman of color.

But I was placed in this team which treated me no different.

I was just told, this is what you have to do.

And I taught myself to code in C++.

I learned Unix.

That's correct.

What helped me is this feeling that once you've done something hard once, you can do it innumerable other times.

I could learn to do anything.

Again, I didn't really connect to the way of learning in lectures and so on.

That's right.

Yeah.

So I used to fall asleep in lectures.

But in my second year, I was accepted into a summer research internship at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

And that was a real turning point in my life.

That was a wonderful occasion.