Kimaya Suryarao

Kimaya Suryarao serves as a Senior Scientist at Outokumpu, a Finnish-based stainless steel company. In this role, she focuses on inventing and developing new technologies aimed at making stainless steel production more sustainable. Her path to this position began with inspiration from her father's career in metallurgy, which led her to pursue studies in the field while emphasizing sustainability. She earned a master's degree from MIT on a full scholarship, where she worked as a research assistant conducting impactful work that could translate to real-world applications. Prior to her master's, she received the Presidential Award of the Institute in 2022 for holding the highest GPA across all departments in her undergraduate engineering program. In her daily work, Suryarao engages in thermodynamic modeling, designs and runs experiments involving furnaces to melt materials for metal extraction, analyzes resulting data, and mentors new team members in scientist and engineer positions. She aspires to lead a metal company as CEO in the future and encourages young women entering the industry by noting that it is a workable field where diversity of perspective and leadership is essential.