She was once a Catholic schoolgirl in France; now Ora Zyto’s a frum bio-engineer in Boston

When someone proposed that we write an article about Ora Zyto, I took a peek at her LinkedIn profile. She’s pictured there in a light brown, shoulder-length wig and wire-rim glasses, grinning at the camera.

Her profile states that she speaks four languages (English, French, Spanish, Russian) and earned a PhD in biological engineering from MIT, writing a thesis on “Computational modeling of protein-biomolecule interactions with application to mechanotransduction and antibody maturation.”

Wow. Can you say that five times fast? I like to think I’m as educated as the next person, but I couldn’t make head or tail of the title, let alone the contents, nor do I speak four languages. I prepared myself to be intimidated.

Ora isn’t just unusual for her geek power. She’s not American, but a native of France. She didn’t grow up Jewish; that decision came while she was a young adult.

But I needn’t have worried about intimidation. The Zytos’ house is located on a narrow, hilly street in Brighton, a frum neighborhood bordering Boston, Massachusetts. Ora comes to the door in a snood, T-shirt, and Crocs, with a wide smile and a pudgy five-month-old on her hip.

“Come in, come in!” she says, in a ringing voice with only a trace of accent.

Like Ora’s attire, her home is casual. There’s a large airy kitchen with a few dishes lingering in the sink, and shelves packed with children’s games and books. The Zytos’ oldest child is 16 and their youngest was born just after Purim; they have four more in between.

We sit at the dining room table and settle in for coffee and conversation. Now I get a better look at Ora. Fair and tall, with wide green eyes behind the glasses, she could pass for a wholesome farm girl — and indeed, those are her maternal roots.