As a child in Medellin, Colombia, Dr. Andrea Maria Hodge was more interested in putting together subjects and verbs than figuring out equations.
“I was a pretty good all-around student, but I was more into writing and literature,” Hodge says.
That all changed when she and her family moved from South America to the United States during her teen years. While she struggled to learn a completely new language, she discovered a new-found love for numbers and science.
“The classes I did well in were the ones with equations because the numbers didn’t change,” she says. “It was comforting to be a good student in something.”
More than 20 years later, the term “good student” would definitely be an understatement when discussing Hodge. The 38-year-old is an assistant professor at the University of Southern California. She is also the Phillip and Cayley MacDonald Early Career Chair in the Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering Department with a joint appointment at the Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science.
Even after she got a handle on the English language, her love for numbers and science remained. Still, Hodge calls her career path simply a process of elimination.
“Many times, people like to make it sound more grandiose than it really is,” she says. “It wasn’t that complicated.”
