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Previous by Date: Subject: [DCHAS-L] Update: Thea Ekins-Coward is thriving Date: Monday, March 7, 2022 at 1:22:15 PM Author: CHAS membership <membership**At_Symbol_Here**DCHAS.ORG> |
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I'm glad to hear that she is doing well. I remember flying over on Easter Sunday 2016 to assist with the investigation headed by Dr. Craig Merlic. As you can imagine it was a chaotic scene. Fortunately I had trained Honolulu Fire Dept HazMat 1 the year before. I was able to interview the members that made entry that evening to better understand what happened. Both reports are still on the UH website
Eugene Ngai
Chemically Speaking LLC
www.chemicallyspeakingllc.com
-----Original Message----- Here's an update on a story that should be well known in the academic lab world. - Ralph Thea Ekins-Coward is thriving Six years after a horrific lab accident in which Thea Ekins-Coward lost an arm, she has moved forward and is thriving. While her lawsuit against the University of Hawaii at M€?noa and her supervisor remains pending, Ekins-Coward is now the chief scientific officer of Industrial Phycology (I-Phyc) ' a water treatment supplier in Bristol, UK ' and is pregnant with her first child. The youngest of four children, Ekins-Coward grew up on the Isle of Wight, off the UK's south coast. The summers there were glorious, she recalls, with lots of time at the beach, on bikes, and fossil hunting. Dyslexia made some aspects of school challenging, and she was always creative ' making art and going with her mother to see art exhibits. 'Throughout my A levels I hedged my bets, taking a mixture of creative and scientific subjects,' she recounts. 'It wasn't until I was 18 and really had to decide a direction for university that I decided to study marine biology due to my affinity for the sea.' Ekins-Coward believes that her dyslexia and creative background has helped her scientific career, having long ago forced her to acquire the skills of patience and problem-solving that are key for a researcher. When she graduated from Newcastle University, UK, with a degree in marine biology in 2008, the field of algal research was gaining a lot of traction. ExxonMobil soon invested $300 million (å£227 million) in biotechnology research to help develop biofuels made from algae. Ekins-Coward decided to stay at Newcastle to pursue an interdisciplinary PhD, which led her to take several diverse postdoc posts in bio-remediation and process intensification of the UK water industry. This research involved using new technologies for carbon capture, investigating aquaculture waste as a bio-coal feedstock and producing high-value products from marine resources. Change in an instant 'An academic career is as much about tenaciousness as it is about skill,' she says. 'Many of my postdocs were short-term, intense projects requiring deliverables to be completed in mere months, due to the funding available.' It was around 2010 when she met her wife, Amy, who was an undergraduate at Northumbrian University at that time. They got married in 2014 at Whitley Bay Lighthouse, surrounded by seals, and were the first same-sex couple to be featured in a UK wedding magazine. 'We thought we were going to have a civil partnership, and then during that year the law changed that we could legally be married,' she recalls. 'So, we were one of the first same-sex couples to actually have a legal marriage.' They moved to Hawaii in 2015 for Ekins-Coward's visiting postdoc at the University of Hawaii at M€?noa. 'We were able to make friends quickly and I used to go surfing and hiking with people I had met on Meet-up, while Amy volunteered with the charity Hawaii Literacy,' she recounts. But everything was ruined the next year by a lab explosion that occurred when she was transferring hydrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide into a low-pressure gas tank to make a growth medium for cells. The blast resulted in the amputation of her dominant right arm, among other injuries. 'If there is one thing the last six years has taught me, it's that life can change in an instant,' Ekins-Coward tells Chemistry World. 'Being an academic is as much an identity as it is a career; we don't get paid much and we spend many long hours working due to our commitment ' I felt like I had lost everything at 29 after being so independent.' She had an identity crisis. Feeling devastated and lost, she and Amy moved back in with her parents on the Isle of Wight. She spent a long time relearning some basic tasks, like dressing herself and writing. (more at URL above) --- ---
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From: ACS Division of Chemical Health and Safety
Sent: Monday, March 7, 2022 1:22 PM
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Subject: [DCHAS-L] Update: Thea Ekins-Coward is thriving
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