Doctoral student Arielle Drummond spends her work days in a lab trying to figure out how to implant a heart-pumping device in tiny patients ranging from infants to 2-year-olds.

A passion for biology and physics in high school led Ms. Drummond to become a candidate for a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. But while the teachers at her New Jersey school may have instilled her with the idea to pursue a career in engineering, they weren't the ideal mentors for a young, African-American female.

"All my teachers were male" and none were black, said Ms. Drummond, 27.

Despite her lack of female or minority role models, she found her niche in science and biomedical engineering, earned undergraduate and graduate degrees at the University of North Carolina and next week will receive the Black Engineer of the Year Award for Student Leadership. The award is given by the National BEYA STEM Global Competitiveness Conference -- an annual event to recognize achievements of black professionals in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. This year's conference will be in Baltimore.

As recipient of the award and as an active member of the National Society of Black Engineers, a student-managed organization, Ms. Drummond believes that she can help push ahead efforts to attract more minorities and young women to the engineering field.

"When I was in middle school and high school, there weren't the number of programs I see now to expose young girls to science. Now they're making a point to let everyone know that science and engineering are not just for guys. As you see more females teaching science and physics, that will help.

"The numbers of minorities are increasing, too. There's a problem there as well but there are programs out there for minorities who want to pursue degrees in science or engineering."

The number of minorities and women in engineering still lags significantly behind white men.

Of a total 1.9 million people working as engineers in the United States in 2006, about 223,000 were women, 104,000 were African-Americans and fewer than 20,000 were African-American women, according to the Commission on Professionals in Science and Technology. Those figures, supplied by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, do not include engineering surveyors, drafters or technicians, said CPST spokesman Nathan Bell. Engineers employed as college faculty are not included either.

Ms. Drummond began considering science as a career option after a high school physics class in which the teacher "was young … and so happy to help with the experiments. My biology teacher was also very passionate. I wondered if I could combine biology and physics, and biomedical engineering was an up-and-coming field; so I decided to check it out."

She graduated from UNC in 2002 with a bachelor's degree in applied science and in 2004 with a master's in biomedical engineering.

She expects to finish her Ph.D. by the end of this year.

At CMU's laboratories in the Pittsburgh Technology Center in Hazelwood, Ms. Drummond works on a project for the National Institutes of Health in conjunction with the University of Pittsburgh. Pitt won a NIH contract to develop a pediatric ventricular assist device for young children suffering from congenital heart defects. Her role is to determine how to implant the device "with minimal complications."

She also attends classes and works as a teaching assistant at CMU.

After she completes her doctoral studies, Ms. Drummond wants to work at a hospital or university where she can continue her research. Ultimately, she wants to become a university professor.

Along the way, she said she'd encountered subtle resistance to being in a field long dominated by men.

"When I was working on my master's, I think because I was a female, my adviser would kind of second-guess me. He didn't do that with the male students in the lab. I think it was subconscious…. I don't think he did it intentionally. But I had to learn to be more assertive as a young graduate student."