Dr. Sinue Gomez was presented with the Outstanding Technical Achievement Award at the 2017 Women of Color STEM Conference. By then, Gomez had 50 U.S. patents, 50 invention disclosures, 37 internal technical reports, and 17 external publications.

"I started at the birth of Gorilla glass," said the manager for glass surface technology at Corning Incorporated. I supported the business from research as well as a development perspective to create new and improved Gorilla glasses. To date, Gorilla Glass is in nearly 5 billion devices."

Gomez said when she got to Corning, she knew very little about glass. But in less than a year she was assigned to a high profile project.

"I had to learn fast, not only about glass composition but methods to enhance its properties," she said. "We had to have a new product in less than 3 months. Typical development projects and new glasses at the time took +18 months. It was intense but I got to work with the best. The iPhone was launched and it had our glass! It is not only the satisfaction of knowing something you work on is out there all over the world but as our leadership remind us, 'because of the work we do in the lab, a lot of people have jobs.'"

During her acceptance speech at the Women of Color STEM Awards, Gomez thanked her supervisors for their support and other leadership opportunities she's received at Corning. "Very early on, I was surrounded by people who constantly encouraged me to learn and keep going," she said.

Gomez also spoke about a later project where she served as manager for the development of cleaning processes and surface cleanliness requirements for pharmaceutical packaging. She led a team of scientists and engineers in the definition and understanding of glass surfaces and product performance for pharmaceutical packaging.

"I went mostly from individual contributor to technology manager. What I do today is very different. I have different problems and have to worry about different aspects of glass," she said.

Save the date for the 2020 Women of Color STEM Conference in Detroit: OCTOBER 8-10