Koplitz spoke to deaf undergraduates at the Rochester Institute of Technology, where she'd gone to college. Several, in a program that is now canceled, talked about plans to go to medical school.

"The Rochester community itself has the largest per capita deaf population, so it's a real gain for the community to have a team that's designed directly to communicate with them directly in ...

She made a mid-career change, giving up her federal government job in public health to pursue a Ph.D. at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. She has one year left to finish.

In the laboratory, Sara Blick-Nitko searches for treatments for cancer. But before she could become a scientist, she had to find what deaf people like her call the "Deaf Scientist Pipeline.