Charlyne Smith has big plans to help develop Jamaica’s energy infrastructure and nuclear engineering education

Jamaican Charlyne Smith has become the first Black woman to earn a PhD in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Florida. 

Smith has big plans to help develop her country’s energy infrastructure and nuclear engineering education. Now a PhD graduate, she plans to help displace fossil fuel energy sources in the Caribbean and replace them with clean energy sources like nuclear energy.

Smith told blackenterprise.com that replacing fossil fuel with clean energy sources, “in doing so, we not only solve energy instability, especially during extreme weather events, but we’ll also get closer to global carbon neutrality goals… . My strategy is to start with Jamaica because it houses the only nuclear reactor in the Caribbean”. 

She explained that although it is a research reactor, its existence demonstrates experience and technical competence in the nuclear engineering space. In addition, the Jamaican is determined to uplift the next generation of nuclear engineers by diversifying engineering disciplines studied throughout the Caribbean. 

Focused on developing STEM education in Jamaica 

She plans to make this happen by building STEM-focused secondary schools, noting, “for example, nuclear engineering is not a discipline taught anywhere in the Caribbean. Early exposure to a wide range of STEM disciplines is essential for solving current and future world problems”.

She added: “I plan to help diversify the engineering disciplines by first developing a summer engineering pilot programme for high school students in Jamaica.”

The hope is that the success of these types of educational programmes will help to create a blueprint for designing STEM-based secondary institutions. She emphasised that becoming the first black woman to gain a PhD in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Florida “means more options, more open doors for marginalised groups, including Black women and men, to create and innovate in the nuclear energy space to solve some of the world’s biggest problems, including climate change”. 

Early upbringing in Jamaica

Smith, raised in St Catherine, had dreams of becoming a scientist and inventor. She hoped to bring solutions for some of the problems in Jamaica, like insufficient access to power and clean water.

In 2017, she graduated from Coppin State University in Baltimore with a degree in chemistry and mathematics. While there, she studied “fruits with dark pigments to create dye-sensitised solar cells, hypothesising that these cells would absorb enough ultraviolet radiation (UV) to power large devices”.

Smith realised that would not be a quick solution to the energy needs of underdeveloped countries and chose to reroute her career path. 

After speaking with nuclear scientist Dr Nickie Peters at a CSU alumni event, she felt pursuing nuclear engineering could help bring immediate change to the countries that needed it.