Sometimes you learn about the field of acoustics through a class or a helpful mentor. Sometimes it appears while you’re performing competitively in Show Choir, at a place called the Corn Palace, wondering why it sounds so bad, and can’t anyone do anything about that?

Molly has dug into all of her interests with similar consideration and thoroughness. Musically inclined, she recognized early on a dual love for math and science. A quick Google search of Physics + Music double majors lead her to the University of Hartford’s Acoustical Engineering & Music major and off she went.

She loved learning everything about acoustics, from the very basic to the deeply niche. By graduation she wanted to dig even deeper into the field and was drawn to the Graduate Program in Acoustics at Penn State. An advisor asked her to join the Biomedical Acoustics Simon Laboratory, which challenged Molly with rigorous biology research and gave her the chance to work hands-on with animal attendants while exploring the use of high-intensity ultrasound on chronically injured tendons. 

During this time she became an Outreach Coordinator for the Penn State Acoustical Society of America, travelling to high schools and elementary schools, demonstrating acoustics to parents and kids with models she herself built. Working hard in both her Ph.D. lab research and with her Outreach programming, she realized she preferred sharing her passion for learning to students and general people. In exploring an interest in science communication, she interned with Threshold and found here a crossroads between her acoustics background, her natural curiosity, and her ability to make complicated science easily understandable. 

Outside of work, Molly is in a three-person band for which she casually learned how to play bass guitar and backup vocals, as you do. She hopes to have a backyard soon to expand her Plant Mom talents and otherwise tends to her sassy, vocal cat Tofu.