Pomona College Dreamers and Achievers Profile
C Meyers, USDOE · 2017
As an undergraduate at Pomona, Carol Meyers ’00 enjoyed proofs and pure math, but she also had a hankering to solve real-world problems. This eventually led her to discover the field of operations research, in which she earned a PhD from MIT, and from there onto a career at a national laboratory. “National labs are great because they serve a role between academia and industry,” she says, “solving problems too large or too applied for academia, and insufficiently profitdriven for industry.” Her workplace, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, is home to the world’s largest laser, frequent home to the world’s fastest supercomputer, and the namesake to element 116 (Livermorium) on the periodic table. During her 10+ years at the laboratory Carol has worked in the areas of energy grid modernization, nuclear counterterrorism, cyber security, stockpile stewardship, and supercomputing, often as a consultant providing mathematical modeling and optimization expertise. Carol has two young kids and serves as co-chair of the New Moms’ Group at her workplace. “Being in a supportive community of moms has really helped me at work,” she says, “because let’s face it – moms know how to get things done!” “People talk a lot about the importance of networking, but this doesn’t have to mean starting technical discussions with strangers. The ability to bond with and relate to other people is far more important, and many women do this very well. Some of my best work networking connections have come through our employer-affiliated daycare.”