KIDS Issue 833 · October 28, 2020

World of Light

She was once a Catholic schoolgirl in France; now Ora Zyto’s a frum bio-engineer in Boston

World of Light

When someone proposed that we write an article about Ora Zyto, I took a peek at her LinkedIn profile. She’s pictured there in a light brown, shoulder-length wig and wire-rim glasses, grinning at the camera.

Her profile states that she speaks four languages (English, French, Spanish, Russian) and earned a PhD in biological engineering from MIT, writing a thesis on “Computational modeling of protein-biomolecule interactions with application to mechanotransduction and antibody maturation.”

Wow. Can you say that five times fast? I like to think I’m as educated as the next person, but I couldn’t make head or tail of the title, let alone the contents, nor do I speak four languages. I prepared myself to be intimidated.

Ora isn’t just unusual for her geek power. She’s not American, but a native of France. She didn’t grow up Jewish; that decision came while she was a young adult.

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