Lizbeth Rostro's greatest achievement, she said, has been "building a career in one of the leading materials science companies and working on projects that positively impact the world."
"This was made possible thanks to the many sacrifices my parents made to immigrate to this country to work and build a better life for my siblings and me. Due to their support and inspiration, I was able to receive my Ph.D. in chemical engineering and to work on projects that I am passionate about and that inspire me every day," said Rostro, whose parents are now "happily retired" and living a hybrid life between Mexico and the U.S.
"My biggest inspiration is my mother. She left her home and immigrated to the U.S. at the age of 16 on her own in search of economic resources and a brighter future for herself and her family. Her valor to continuously look for opportunities to provide for her family and the sacrifices she made afforded me and my siblings infinitely more opportunities to pursue our dreams than she had.
"Throughout it all, she instilled in us the importance of education and ensured that we would not be subject to the working conditions she had to endure."
Rostro earned a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from the University of Arkansas and doctoral degree from Purdue University.
After working for six years with Dow's product development for industrial processes, Rostro wanted to shift her focus to applications more closely tied to sustainability and joined Dow's Packaging and Specialty Plastics' polyethylene product research and development group as a research scientist.
"My background in graduate school and my early career at Dow focused on developing structure-property relationships of various polymers for different applications. An opportunity to leverage these skills in the Dow polyethylene product R&D group became available. In this role, I have been able to focus on developing more sustainable materials for food packaging designs," Rostro said.
Rostro's projects deliver solutions that enable the design of more sustainable food packaging structures.
"This requires that our polyethylene solutions deliver effective packaging during the life of the packaging containing the food and a packaging design that enables easy recyclability. These two targets are not often aligned and require different material properties, which present challenges," she said.
"Additionally, given that polyethylene is an established technology, delivering innovative solutions requires time and comes with a risk of failure. As a result, it is critical to balance projects that vary in scope from short term to long term to ensure that value to the business is being created."
Rostro is involved with the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, Society of Plastics Engineers and Dow's Hispanic Latin Network.
"My life mission," she said, "is to do work in areas that aim to leave the world in a better place than I found it."