The stereotypes for scientists are Coke-bottle glasses, slide rules in the pockets of white lab coats and a myopia against straying far from the lab.

Katharine Page explodes those stereotypes with abandon.

Page, who works at the Los Alamos National Laboratory as a chemical engineer, is a weightlifter extraordinaire.

Her prowess powering big weights above her head led her to be named the female New Mexico Games athlete of the year.

"I am honored to be the New Mexico Games athlete of the year and represent the state of New Mexico, the sport of weightlifting and the High Desert Athletic Club," Page said. "Next to my friends and family, I most enjoy science and sports, and New Mexico has an absolutely vibrant spectrum of both."

The New Mexico Games, an Olympic-style series of 20 athletic events ranging from arm wrestling to volleyball held each summer across the state, will hold this year's weightlifting competition today at The University of New Mexico weight room.

Page competes in the 69-kilogram weight division, where she took gold in 2006 and 2009.

"The New Mexico Games are a great celebration of the state's diversity," she said. "I hope to participate — and encourage others to participate — for years to come."

Page, 28, got into weightlifting in college while attending the University of Maine, where she participated in field events.

"We did weightlifting to train, we did a lot of it," she said. "I had a successful collegiate career, but my strength coach was always saying, 'You know, you should really try competing in this.' "

But it wasn't until her first foray to Los Alamos where she began to get serious about the sport.

"I was out here actually on an undergraduate internship for NASA at Los Alamos when I befriended a theoretical chemist who was an Olympic-style weight lifter," Page explained. "I started worked out with him and then he was being coached by one of the strength coaches at UNM, Joaquin Chavez. So he took me down to see Joaquin. After I worked out with him for a few weeks, Joaquin quickly became my coach and the rest is kind of history."

That history includes three years as a collegiate national champion while completing her PhD at Cal-Berkeley, as well as an invitation to the 2008 U.S. Olympic Trials, where she finished 20th among 30 competitors.

What's more, Page has been able to accomplish this despite battling a balky knee and Type I diabetes.

Weightlifting has served as an outlet for her as she's worked her way through school and it continues to be one now, as well.

"I think sports has always helped me and science has always helped me focus on all aspects of my life," Page said. "Both of them take an incredible amount of discipline. I love both of them. I actually think they work really well hand in hand. During my PhD work, I really appreciated having that couple of hours a day of hard training to get my mind in a completely different place, and to get my body working and awake. And I really enjoy just as much going back to the science."

And her science is certainly not the least of the story. As a post-doctorate fellow in Los Alamos, Page works in a class of material called phase change.

"I specifically do a lot of neutron and X-ray scattering," she said. "Techniques that really try to figure out where the atoms are with the atomic structure. How is this related to their properties and how can we make sure of that to apply that to make new or better materials."

After a little bit of that, some weightlifting sounds pretty simple.