An Interview With Nellie Ndebele
- Vanshika Dhyani
- Aug 18, 2020
- 3 min read
Updated: Jan 4, 2021
Nellie is an ambitious, kind, confident, and conscientious person, who enjoys taking on challenges. She loves her friends and family and they are a valuable part of her life.
“You have the power to dictate what path you take in life. Don’t stop doing something because one person tells you that you are not capable. If you want something, work and fight for it.”
What inspires you?
Seeing strong women in society and in life is what inspires me. The people who are doing what they love despite the fear of failure. Those are people who inspire me because its okay to fail as long as you get up and try again.
What did you want to be when you were younger?
I wanted to be a lawyer, for as long as I remember.
Which subjects did you enjoy at school?
Art, Biology, Maths, and English.
What would you like to tell your younger self?
Things will always change, but everything will always be okay.
Why did you choose STEM?
I love science. Originally I wanted to study Biology as it was my best subject at school. However, when I got university, I enjoyed physics way more than I had in school and decided that it is what I wanted to do.
How important is it for you to stand out?
In an ideal world, I do not want to stand out because there should be no need for it. If the STEM field had the necessary diversity then there would be no need for me to stand out. That is not the case, so yes it is important for me to stand out, and hopefully, I can inspire women to choose the STEM field.
What difficulties did you face in the industry, as a woman?
I have only begun my journey in this field, so I have not experienced much. I will say that Ireland does have a huge gender gap when it comes to STEM. That gender gap needs to be tackled in schools. When I was in school I was discouraged from taking physics as a subject. That did not inspire me to want to learn the subject that I now have so much love for. That is a fact that saddens me because how many other girls went through the same thing and now will never know whether or not they would want to study a STEM subject.
What advice would you give to the next generation of female scientists?
Don’t be afraid to reach out and communicate with the female scientists that are already out here. Also, don’t be afraid to be the change that you want to see.
During my undergraduate degree I participated in an internship in the Mater Private Hospital in Dublin for 7 months. It was during this intership that I decided that becoming a Medical Physicist was the career that I would like to undertake. Simply put a medical physicist is a health care professional that has specialised training in the medical applications of physics. On this intership I got to experience what it was like to work as a medical physicist in a clinical setting. I joined the Diagnostic Imaging Center in the Mater Private with no experience and a small inkling of what it takes to be a medical physicist. In the 7 months that I was there, I got the oppurtunity to observe and participate in various tasks that were needed to be performed such as, quality assurance of equipment, shielding assessments, radiation protection and much more. I learnt how the physics principles that I have been learning in my degree are applied in a clinical setting. I learnt a lot in my time there, and the exprience pushed me to further my education in order to become a Medical Physicist in my own right. I have only recently completed my masters in medical physics and I am now on the path to beginning my career as a medical physicist.
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