Autor: Darcy Malengo Thomas

Darcy Malengo Thomas, a California native, enjoys an exciting career in science. She attributes her love of science to her father and the amazing outdoor adventures he took her and her siblings on as children. They backpacked the Los Padres National Forest and the Sierra Nevada. These trips included “living off the land”. He took them snorkeling in the ocean, and fishing the ocean and streams. They tide pool fished along the California coast. They went clamming in the Montana De Oro mud flats of San Luis Obispo County. He taught them to make homemade fishing gadgets. They ate everything they caught. They enjoyed watching their dad prepare delicious meals like clam chowder, fish cakes and more with their fresh catches. Darcy has been a project manager in the medical device manufacturing industry for over fifteen years. She leads cross functional design teams to develop and market medical products for world leading companies. Prior to project management, she enjoyed a career as a R&D Scientist developing these products. Her career roots started at California Institute of Technology (Caltech) where she manufactured and purified peptides (short chains of amino acids) and oligonucleotides (short DNA strands) for graduate student postdoctoral research. Darcy had an incredible opportunity in 2020 to lead a cross functional design team to develop and market COVID-19 products to help fight the World pandemic. It became clear to her through that experience that she wanted to do something to help inspire young people to pursue careers in SCIENCE. Her mind filled with thoughts of the incredible journey SCIENCE has taken her on. She knew she had to share her journey with children! She thought… how better than to write a children’s book?! All the “PLACES” science takes her in this book are her true life experiences.