A Match Made by Computer - or Fate?

I asked her to tell me more about what led to that decision, and when she offered insight about it, I saw that I was the perfect person for her to talk to.

Brymer Chin is an accomplished scientist in America, and Rosalie Clemens was a struggling student half a world away in Europe. These two probably would have never met, but MentorNet brought them together and revealed a series of curious coincidences.

Brymer, a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff at Lucent Technologies in Whippany, New Jersey, has a Ph.D. in solid-state physics. He was a Principal Technical Staff Member at AT&T Labs, a founding corporate sponsor of MentorNet, when he was paired with Rosalie for the ‘99-‘00 academic year.

He had previously mentored new staff members at AT&T Labs and Bell Labs and had been matched the year before with a different MentorNet protégé. "Many corporations these days are in a state of turmoil. It's so easy to become self-absorbed and preoccupied with problems at work, and mentoring helps take my mind off my own situation," Brymer says. "Also, many of my closest friends are female scientists who've been through a lot in a profession which is primarily male, so I'm aware of some of the difficulties women face."

Rosalie, a native of Germany, was a first-year Ph.D. student at a European technical university. She signed up with MentorNet as a member of the International Society for Optical Engineering and had low expectations for the mentoring experience, she says, until her situation took a turn for the worse.

To stay, or not to stay?

"I was becoming increasingly unhappy with my graduate studies; I'd never really wanted to pursue a Ph.D. but had been coaxed into it, and I felt like a fish out of water," Rosalie says. "Plus, the atmosphere at my workplace had been deteriorating for some time, and the combination of those two things convinced me I needed to quit the program and start searching for a job."

Enter Brymer, whose graduate-school experience had been a struggle as well.

He has all the experience that I don't have, and he's helped me transition from life as a graduate student to life in a lab.

"Rosalie and I had been corresponding for only a short time when she told me she'd decided to leave her graduate program. She said what she'd really like to do was get an R&D job in a U.S. lab," he says. "I asked her to tell me more about what led to that decision, and when she offered insight about it, I saw that I was the perfect person for her to talk to.

"My own graduate experience was horrible - you hear about grad students' great camaraderie with professors, but it was a rough time for me, and I almost left. I knew what Rosalie was going through," Brymer says. "But I gave her the pluses and minuses of trying to do research in the U.S. with and without a Ph.D., saying that life here would be easier with one."

A difficult graduate-school experience was not the only thing Brymer and Rosalie shared. Her background was in optics/physics, which overlapped with his field at Bell Labs. Both enjoy writing, so they emailed each other frequently, often sharing information about their families and interests, discussing the differences between European and American Ph.D. programs, and comparing approaches to writing résumés.

At one point, Rosalie sent Brymer one of the many résumé files and contact letters she had stored on her computer, asking him to review and comment on it.

The one she chose to send was addressed to a particular manager, who, in another fortuitous coincidence, Brymer recognized as someone he'd gone to graduate school with more than 20 years before. Brymer called him, as well as several former AT&T associates, to inquire about open positions and to circulate Rosalie's résumé.

A small world

As several job leads materialized, Brymer helped Rosalie arrange an interview tour in the U.S., which also provided an opportunity for them to meet in person. After several successful interviews, she accepted a position as an Advanced Research Engineer in 3M's Optical Communication Technology Center, in Austin, Texas. Because she had to wait several months for her U.S. visa, Rosalie decided to continue her Ph.D. work in the interim; this year, she'll finish her Licentiate, the European degree that translates internationally as a Ph.D.

She continues to be in touch with Brymer via email. "I could never have had access to a person like Brymer without MentorNet," Rosalie says. "His correspondence helped me deal with my ongoing work situation and helped bring my job hunting into focus. I still think of him as a mentor: He has all the experience that I don't have, and he's helped me transition from life as a graduate student to life in a lab. He still helps me bring things into focus, helps me understand where to start."

Brymer is also happy to continue the relationship. "I sense a grand design in our match," he says. "It was not random, of course, because a computer made it, but still...."