My Mom, The Scientist is a personal and poetic film about the filmmaker Thomas Allen Harris' mother, Rudean Leinaeng - a chemistry professor and activist who taught and researched at Bronx Community College for 30 years. Born in the Bronx in 1937, Rudean was part of the first generation of Black scientists who were able to access jobs and opportunities that the Civil Rights Movement opened up in the United States. She found a love for chemistry, and science would become an integral part of her life and the lives of those she touched. What lessons can we learn from Rudean’s story in the face of a declining number of BIPOC students entering STEM fields and an era marked by national mistrust of science?

The film will combine personal stories of contemporary and historical Black scientists using verité and archival footage, humor, user-generated clips, home movies, animation, and Thomas Allen Harris’s previous filmography to examine the seldom told story of the challenges and untapped potential around African American participation in the sciences. This film asks the question of why, after decades of investment in education and initiatives to increase Black representation in STEM fields, we find ourselves with so few Black scientists.