At Duke, unless you were an engineering person or some other kind of scientist-in-training, there were four hot career tracks: consulting, investment banking, law, and politics.

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Alexander Zaitsev, chief scientist at the Kotelnikov Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics, disagrees.

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Khare traveled from her California home to Phoenix last week for the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, where her invention was honored as one of two winners of Young Scientist Awards.

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Its 25 people include a PhD in Electrical Engineering who is an expert on fiber optics, an aerospace engineer, and a computer scientist with a string of entrepreneurial successes in his wake.

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Years ago I trained as an aspiring scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), though I left to pursue a career in engineering and commerce.

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