>> Announcer: Live from Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE! Covering Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. Brought to you buy SiliconANGLE Media. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of the Grace Hopper conference here in Orlando, Florida. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my cohost, Jeff Frick. We're joined by Dr. Deborah Berebichez. She is the chief data scientist at Metis, which is owned by Kaplan. Thanks so much for joining us. >> Thank you, Rebecca. Thanks for inviting me, too. >> You have had such an interesting and varied professional career. You were even a host of a lot of different science-oriented television programs. You work on initiatives to get young women into technology. But one of the things that is most impressive is that you were the first Mexican woman to ever earn her PhD in physics-- >> Deborah: In physics, at Stanford. >> From Stanford University. What an accomplishment. But talk a little bit about your path to Stanford. Tell our viewers a little bit more about your trajectory. >> It's definitely a convoluted, and not a typical path. I grew up in Mexico City in a conservative community that discouraged girls and young women from pursuing a career in the hard sciences. I was told from a very young age that physics was for geniuses, and that I had better pick a more feminine path, like communications or something else, which were great careers, but they were not the right ones for a very inquisitive mind like mine. When I confessed to my mom in high school that I loved physics and math, she said, "Don't tell the boys, "because you'll intimidate them, "and you may not be able to get married." >> Rebecca: Nonsense! >> Actually, it's funny, because that kind of overt bias is sometimes easier to combat than the one that more women experience, which is a more subtle bias. You know, that the media tells us that some things are for boys and for women. So, in my case, it was very open, and so it almost gave me more courage to try to fight against it. Anyways, so, it came time to pick what career, what BA to do in college, and I was told by the advisors in school that philosophy was a more feminine and acceptable path, but it also asked a lot of questions about the universe. So, I enrolled in a local college in Mexico City to study philosophy, but the more I tried to stifle my love for physics and math, the more that inner voice was screaming, "This is your path. "You have to do it, you have to study physics." Just like a lot of kids do their rebellious things behind their parents' back, I would go and rent from the library books about obscure physicists like Tycho Brahe, this Danish astronomer who was locked up in a tower, and I was thinking, I'll be just like him, kind of antisocial, nobody will like me, but at least I'll have my data, my numbers, to keep me company. >> Rebecca: This was your teenage rebellion, is reading about brooding philosophers? >> Well, there other-- >> Okay. >> In the middle of my BA in philosophy in Mexico, I decided to apply to universities in the US to give it a chance, and give myself the opportunity to pursue both BAs, physics and philosophy. I was very fortunate to get a full scholarship to attend Brandeis University, and I say that because, in Mexico, universities are about eight times less expensive than in the US, so I could have not afford to go anywhere else. While at Brandeis, I took the courage to take a very general course in astronomy. Very little math, introductory course, and there I met the teaching assistant, who was a graduate student by the name of Roopesh. He was from India. Roopesh and I became good friends, and he told me that I wasn't the typical student that just wanted to get an A in the class and do the homework well, that my curiosity had no end. That I would ask questions about quantum mechanics and statistical mechanics, and I wanted to know everything about the universe and nature. So, one time, we were walking in Harvard Square, and I realized that I was the only one who could make my dream of becoming a physicist happen. With teary eyes, I told Roopesh, "I don't want to die without trying. "I just don't want to die without trying to do physics." He called his advisor on a payphone. He was the head of the graduate student committee, so he called me to Brandeis. He handed me a book called Div, Grad and Curl, Vector Calculus in Three Dimensions. For me, it was an alien language. He said to me, "There's a problem, "because the BA in physics takes four years, "and your scholarship is only for two years. "But guess what, someone else has done this at Brandeis. "His name is Ed Witten. "Do you know who he is? "He switched from history to physics." I said, "You're kidding. "Ed Witten is a very famous physicist, "the father of string theory. "Clearly, there's no way I could pull this off." He says to me, "I give you two months this summer. "If, by the end of the summer, "you pass a test on this one book, "I'll let you skip through "the first two years of the physics major "so you can complete the BA in only two years." Roopesh decided to mentor me and tutor me 10 hours a day for eight weeks. I tell the story of Roopesh because I always wanted to pay him back. He said to me, when he was growing up in India, in Darjeeling, there was an old man who would teach him and his sisters the tabla, the musical instrument, English, and math. And when they wanted to pay him back, the old man said, "No, the only way you could ever pay me back "is if you do this with someone else in the world." That's how my mission in life started, to inspire, encourage, and help other, especially women, but minorities who, like myself, want a career in STEM, but for some reason, whether it be financial or social, feel that they cannot achieve their dreams. >> Great story. >> Yeah, wow! Incredible! >> And then, you asked about Stanford. So, then I went back to Mexico, and I was doing a Master's in theoretical physics, and I was again told by my community, "Okay, you've got it over with. "Stay here, get married and stay as part of the community." But I was still more hungry for knowledge, and to do more physics. I was very late in the application cycle, and I decided to apply to schools. I went to my Mexican advisor's office, and I said, "You know, I'm going to leave again. "I'd like to go to the US where I can pursue experiments. "I wrote to a couple of professors." He says, "Who did you write to?" I say, "Well, there's one particularly interesting one, "Steve Chu at Stanford." His jaw dropped. He said, "Steve Chu?" I said, "Yes, why?" He said, "Do you realize he just won the Nobel Prize "a couple of months ago?" And Steve Chu later became Secretary of Energy in the US. I was so fortunate that he received my email with interest, invited me to work directly with him at Stanford. That's how my career started. >> It's such a good mix of fortuitousness, serendipity, but also doggedness on your part, so, really, there's a lot going on. >> Don't be shy, is my-- >> This gets to our final question, really, which is, what's your advice for the younger versions of you? >> The first thing is that it was not all easy for me. There was a lot of failure along the way. My first advice is, the people who get to the end of the line and succeed in life are not the ones that simply persevere and get everything right. They're the ones that keep getting up and succeeding step after step. It's the courage to get to the end and persevere even when failure exists. The second piece of advice, especially for parents out there, is when your kids ask questions about the world and nature, don't just give them the answer. Go through the pleasure of finding things out, as Feynman would say. Especially with computing. Computers are a tool, a magnificent tool. But they're just a tool to another goal, which is to gain insights about the world. It's more important to be a critical thinker and a thought leader, rather than just focus on being proficient at coding. >> You had the element of humor, you had the element of storytelling, you had the element of everyday things in the way, 'cause you're obviously a super smart lady to accomplish these things. Not everybody's so super smart, so you've created a style in which you can help those that aren't maybe necessarily PhDs from Stanford to gain interest, to become interested, to kind of hook 'em into this interesting world that you're so passionate about. >> Yeah, thank you. I try to do it through my TV show that I cohost with The Science Channel called Outrageous Acts of Science, which serves exactly that purpose, to get people interested in the fact that science and STEM is behind everyday life. It's not just some complicated equation in a board. It's what we go through every day, and if you just gain the joy of discovering those concepts, you're set. >> Great. Well, Deborah, thank you so much for joining us. It's been so much fun talking to you. >> Thank you. I loved being here. >> I'm Rebecca Knight for Jeff Frick. We will have more from Grace Hopper just after this. (fast techno music)