Her Story
About Pranita
Pranita Kerber serves as a design physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Labs. She joined this role in mid-August after transitioning from Sandia National Labs, where she spent about eight years working on radiation effects on electronics and the survivability of stockpile in hostile conditions. Kerber began her career in 2008 after earning her PhD in material science and engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, initially joining IBM Research to perform finite element modeling of advanced CMOS devices for approximately ten years. In 2018, she obtained a master's degree in operations research from Columbia University while at IBM. Her expertise encompasses the analysis of complex systems across various time and length scales, with a focus on materials response in extreme conditions through modeling and simulation. She holds about 100 US patents and is a senior member of IEEE. Kerber attributes her success to perseverance, persistence, and patience, emphasizing the importance of collaborative problem-solving in cutting-edge technical fields. She values accountability, collaboration, and respect in both her professional and personal life.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Pranita
01What do you attribute your success to?
Perseverance and persistence and patience are top qualities required for success in any kind of cutting-edge technical field because the problems are so large that one person or one team cannot really solve it so you have to have a very collaborative approach to problem solving.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
Having a depth in one area like establishing yourself in one specific technical area is very important early in your career and once you have established your reputation your depth then it's much easier to use that as a currency to branch out and expand your area of knowledge so having that anchor having that core or that depth of experience in one area is the first essential step.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
One has to overcome the self-doubt that one carries women have this tendency to overanalyze or doubt themselves more than the male counterparts so having a belief in oneself and belief in the fact that you have something important and you need to contribute that can go a very long way.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
The biggest challenge is defining the scope and then a process that works for that particular team and then of course not just instituting a process but implementing it and then making sure that it's been followed through so kind of understanding where the inefficiencies are in the current way of doing things and proposing a new structure to organize a lot of work and leveraging some of the work that other teams may be doing so that we don't kind of reinvent the wheel.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Accountability and collaboration are my top two values and respect because if you model you can get respect from your colleagues only if you model the behaviors that you expect from them so demonstrating through action that these are the kind of this is the way or the culture that you would like to have at workplace I think that's important.
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