Catherine D'Aoust never pictured herself in academia. She didn't even see herself getting an undergraduate degree.

Now, she's trying to reshape the traditional idea of what it means to be in academia. 

"There's so much research happening that kind of only exists within the academic walls. You might go to a conference and you might talk to, you know, eight or 10 people that understand your work, but other than that, a lot of it kind of exists in this echo chamber that is academia," said the Univer…