When trying to decide what to do in life, some young people may worry about limiting themselves to one thing.
For Lauren Carroll-Kibisov, a research scientist with a background in musical theater and dance, having many artistic talents helps her think creatively as a physicist.
Carroll-Kibisov, 27, started onstage in a production of “Guys and Dolls” when she was 3 years old. Her mother, who taught Spanish at Putnam City West High School in Oklahoma City, was involved with the school’s drama club. When the show needed a child actor, Carroll-Kibisov walked across the stage in the opening number.
“I grew up dancing since I was little; I also grew up onstage,” Carroll-Kibisov said. “My mom used to help out with costumes, so I was just back there, and they said, ‘We need a kid.’ And my mom said, ‘She’s here.’ So they put me onstage. I was 3 years old, and they were like, ‘She’s kind of good at this.’”
After enjoying her first taste of the theater, Carroll-Kibisov loved it so much that she got involved even more. She said she was always backstage, singing the songs and mimicking the actor’s lines.
Seeing she could easily memorize lines at a young age, she moved on from playing for the cuteness factor and landed speaking roles as she got older.
“I’m really grateful. There was a director, her name was Linda Brown, and she just kept putting me in shows,” Carroll-Kibisov said. “She really fostered that love for it. And my mom’s a big musical theater person. She was a singer in college and did all the choral and voice work. She was a really big mentor and teacher to me growing up, and she really made sure I was in the right places to learn theater and dance and music.”
Carroll-Kibisov went on to perform in local theaters and studied classical ballet at the Oklahoma City Ballet School.
“I grew up doing a lot of classical ballet work while also doing musical theater,” she said. “There’s so much crossover between the two genres, so it worked out really well. I went to a pretty intensive ballet school. It was really a lot of classical technique, which I’m so grateful for.”
Her parents also enrolled her in jazz and tap dance classes, where she learned skills that came in handy when doing musicals.
“I could do tap, jazz and ballet because that’s what they want for musical theater, and so that’s what my mother enrolled me in,” Carroll-Kibisov said.
Carroll-Kibisov said her family loved the arts and fostered art appreciation, taking her to art shows in the Oklahoma City arts district when she was a child.
Lauren Carroll-Kibisov began dancing at an early age, and studied classical ballet in Oklahoma City.
“I was 15 minutes away from the arts district,” she said. “My parents were taking me to all the shows and all the art exhibits and all the ballets. They’re very big into, not just the performing arts, but any arts, so I was exposed to that at a really young age. My dad fostered a lot of that exposure. He wanted to make sure that I got to see every aspect of the art world, both paintings and art museums, installations works, all of that.”
To the surprise of everyone who thought she would go on to study theater, Carroll-Kibisov went into the field of high-energy physics.
“I‘ve always had a love for science,” she said. “Even while doing theater, I was really into science. I thought I was going to be a chemist because I was obsessed with Marie Curie for a while, and I knew I was going to be a scientist. I didn’t know what type of scientist I wanted to be.”
As she learned ballet, Carroll-Kibisov said she understood the movements in terms of centripetal motion and force.
A teacher in high school, Brad Sanders, inspired her to study physics in college.
“I fell in love with quantum mechanics in high school,” she said. “I had a fabulous teacher, his name is Mr. Sanders, who gave me a book called ‘Our Elegant Universe’ because I was really into the unit, and he said, ‘I think you’ll like this book.’ And after I read that book, I was like, ‘I love physics. This is what I want to do.’”
She earned an undergraduate degree in physics from the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma.
The physics program at Kansas State University brought Carroll-Kibisov and her husband, Kirill, to Manhattan in 2020.
“I wanted to stay close to home, I didn’t want to go too far away,” Carroll-Kibisov said. “I had applied around and gotten into quite a few, but this ended up being the perfect fit. It was 4 hours away from my hometown. I loved the department, I liked the people. Whenever I came to visit K-State, especially the grad students at K-State, they were very welcoming. It was a really nice environment which, being a woman in physics, is not always an easy environment to find.”
Carroll-Kibisov works as a graduate research assistant and looks forward to completing her doctorate in another year or two.
“This is my year of main research and then I’ll finish my dissertation and defend,” she said.
Kirill Kibisov has shown his support in all of Lauren’s endeavors. He is a math teacher at Manhattan High School as well as the head freshman boys’ basketball coach and an assistant for the varsity team.
Originally from Russia, Kirill Kibisov came to the United States to play college basketball at Southwestern Christian University in Bethany, Oklahoma.
The two met at a church youth group.
“Lauren is a caring and loving person who is always there to support you,” Kirill said. “She is an active member of the Manhattan community and makes everyone around her feel special.”
Lauren Carroll-Kibisov starred as Beth March in a recent production of “Little Women” at the Columbian Theatre in Wamego. She has also been in shows at the Manhattan Arts Center and the C.L. Hoover Opera House in Junction City.
Carroll-Kibisov is still active in the world of local theater. She has been in plays at the Manhattan Arts Center, the Columbian Theatre in Wamego and the C.L. Hoover Opera House in Junction City.
She played Countess Andrenyi in the C.L. Hoover Opera House’s production of “Murder on the Orient Express” in August 2023, which she said was one of her favorite plays to perform in.
“That was a dream role for me,” she said. “I grew up watching Hercule Poirot.”
She is now involved in the Junction City Little Theater’s production of “Footloose,” as Ariel Moore. The show opens in April.
“I’m very excited about that show,” Carroll-Kibisov said. “The people who are in it, a lot of them are people who I worked with before. I also like JCLT’s theater community. It’s one of the most welcoming and accepting theater communities I’ve ever worked with. They really are a family.”
Carroll-Kibisov said being involved in the arts has helped her to be creative with her research and problem-solving skills.
It’s also been a good outlet for her.
“Especially when you’re young, pursue as many things that you’re interested in because it’s amazing how many things cross over in life later on,” she said. “There is something about taking a break and doing something creative that is just like refreshing your mind. A lot of the math that I do, it really takes three-dimensional visualization as to what’s going on, and if you have any sort of art background, you’re used to thinking about these things in your head in a very three-dimensional way. I think that has drastically helped me with very complex math problems.”
She said while it used to feel as if she had to choose between performing arts and science, pursuing one field does not have to mean giving up another.
“I do want to encourage young girls that, if they have any interest in the STEM or math or any of the science fields, it’s so beneficial to pursue that as long as you feel that passion for it,” Carroll-Kibisov said. “Keep going after high school, and know that just because you are pursuing one field doesn’t mean you have to give up your love for something else.”
