Throughout Mimi's career, she's made a splash in the scientific world by going eye-to-eye with sea organisms like giant green sea anemones and lobsters. She sees them as some of nature's machines. How does she test their moving parts? By making models of them.

Mimi calls her models "Mr. Potato Heads," named after the popular kid's toy. She makes the models with changeable parts—taking off or adding body features. Sometimes she twists limbs into new positions. When Mimi changes a model, she takes it for a "test run" in her lab to see how the changes affect the way the forces of fluids (water or air) impact the model.

Sniff, sniff. Something smells good down here!

Mimi and her buddies meet with Einstein in D.C.

In the 1990s Mimi built a robotic lobster to figure out how lobsters pluck odors from the sea. She knew they sniffed around by flicking two small, hairy antennules on the front of their heads. "But how do they physically catch the odors that are in the water around them?" she asked.

Mimi put the model lobster in a flow tank that mimics the ocean currents. After a series of experiments, she had some answers. During the fast flick downstrokes, water and the odors in it were able to flow in between the closely packed hairs on the antennules. Those hairs are full of the nerves that respond to odors. Each antennule flick is a sniff!

Mimi dives into her work, studying sea creatures on Australia's Great Barrier Reef in 1995.

Today Mimi teaches at the University of California at Berkeley. She juggles work with camping trips with her husband Zack and hanging out with a group of women scientists she has known for 25 years.