Chemical Engineer to Compete in the US Women’s Open

The summer after finishing her PhD at MIT, Kimberly Dinh SM ’17, PhD ’20 decided to enter a golf tournament on a lark. She ended up winning. 

“That exceeded my expectations,” says Dinh, who grew up golfing but hadn’t played competitively in years. The 2020 win “really reignited that competitive itch,” she says, and ultimately signaled her return to the sport. Most recently, she earned a spot in the 2024 US Women’s Open, one of the most prestigious tournaments in women’s golf.

These days, Dinh has to make an effort to find time for golf, since she is working as an associate research scientist at Dow, a multinational chemical company. Yet, 

she says her chemical engineering background makes her a better golfer. “There’s a lot of overlap in regard to how I attack problems, challenges, or weaknesses, both in research and in golf, and that’s influenced a lot by the scientific method,” she says. “My experience in science makes me better at being methodical, having routines, and attacking problems step by step.”

Dinh first got interested in golf as a child when her father “caught the golf bug,” she says. “He then had the rest of the family try it out. My younger brother and I liked it, and it became our summer activity. I played in my first tournament when I was 10 or 11. By high school, I realized I was fairly successful and just kept working at it.”

She was on the golf team as an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin but then decided to step away from competitive golf to pursue her doctorate. “I just didn’t really have the time to spend on it while at MIT. I wanted to explore other interests and have other experiences during grad school,” she says. “I still picked up the clubs every few weeks, but I was just playing for fun.” 

Having completed her PhD in chemical engineering in May 2020, Dinh took the summer off before starting her job at Dow. She was going to travel, but then the pandemic foiled her plans, so she filled her time with golf again. “I signed up for a couple more tournaments and during 2020 had a lot of success,” says Dinh. That same year, she also became the vice president of the MIT Alumni Golfer’s Association—a title she still holds. 

As a mid-amateur golfer—a category for those who are past high school and college competition and often have full-time jobs—Dinh says she now has a more relaxed mindset about the game. “Sometimes, when you get way into the competitive golf or sports world, your identity can get tied up into that. At this point, I have a ton of other things going on, so I just appreciate it and don’t live and die by every shot, as I probably did throughout college,” she says.

Not surprisingly, much of Dinh’s focus today is on her research, which involves finding ways to perform chemical reactions more efficiently—be that at milder conditions, lower temperatures, or lower pressures. The work is important, she says, because it can reduce the carbon footprint of chemical manufacturing. 

It also requires a kind of persistence that she also applies to golf, she says. “In both research and golf, you have a hypothesis, and you identify a weakness and then you go after it and work on how you can tackle that weakness, using data and results to provide feedback. In golf, I’m always looking at stats from my performance on the course and how that influences what I need to work on,” she says. 

Science has also given her “a lot of patience in solving problems,” she says—and that patience is paying off. Dinh won the US Women’s Mid-Amateur at Stonewall in Elverson, PA, in September 2023—the most prestigious mid-amateur title in the world—which was her ticket to the US Women’s Open, May 28–June 2. 

“I’m excited—it’s definitely a bucket list item and something I’ve always wanted to do as an amateur,” says Dinh. “It’ll be my first major, and it’ll be an opportunity to test my game against the best players in the world.”

Photo (top): Jeff Hayes.