A piece of her article on FierceBiotech speaks specifically to her time at Georgia Tech and how she now gives back:

Of course, chromosomal diversity hasn't always been commonplace in the worlds of science and math. At Georgia Tech back in the '80s, Kilpatrick was often the only woman in her undergraduate engineering classes and almost unfailingly the only Y-lacking student at the doctoral level. Upon graduation, she was among the first 15 women to get a doctorate of mechanical engineering from the school.

"Looking back, I don't know how I did that," she said. "Young women and minorities, they have to see a role model to actually have this idea early on that that could be them. We pattern-match naturally."

Now, serving on advisory boards at her alma mater, Kilpatrick gets to play a part in making sure the next generation of biomedical engineers has an easier time visualizing success. And while female enrollment has increased in every corner of science, math and engineering, the biomedical field has diversified at a much faster rate, she said, a trend that comes as no great surprise to the former aerospace engineer.