Top Women Scientists of 2008

It's the end of the year and all the magazines are publishing their "best of" lists - including the top scientists. Here's a round-up of women scientists who have been profiled:

Anne Wojcicki and Linda Avey, co-founders of biotech startup 23andMe were among Popular Mechanics' "The Internet's Top 10 Most Controversial Figures of 2008"

Discover named Senator Barbara Mikulski, chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, and Science as one of the "10 most influential people in science". No, she's not a scientist herself, but she regularly fights for federal science funding.

Discover named University of Alaska ecologist Katey Walter, Harvard stem cell biology Amy Wagers, UC Berkeley molecular biologist Nicole King, and MIT astrophysicist Sara Seager among the "20 best brains under 40"

Discover named Anastasia Roda, 19, and Isha Jain, 17, both of Pennsylvania, among their "Teen Genius: 5 Promising Scientists under 20"

Seed profiles physicist and systems biologist Aleksandra M. Walczak, virologist Ilaria Capua , geneticist Heejung Kim, user of "astronomical medicine" Michelle Borkin, and materials scientist Neri Oxman, in their feature on 2008's Revolutionary Minds

Popular Science profiled materials scientist Kristi Anseth, neuroscientist Rebecca Saxe, and chemist Melanie Sanford, in their Brilliant 10 Class of 2008

Tags: women in science

Reshma Shetty: Inventing the Future

Some see synthetic biology as the future of biotechnology, where standardized biological"parts" are used to simplify the creation biological machines that synthesize drugs or fuel or other useful compounds. One of the prominent scientists in this field is Reshma Shetty, who earned her Ph.D. in Biological Engineering from MIT earlier this year.

Shetty and three other MIT PhDs have teamed up with their adviser Tom Knight to found Ginko Bioworks, a biotech startup that is developing biological parts and technologies for engineered biological systems and helping other biotechs do the same. The "Do It Yourself Life" approach of Shetty and Ginko Bioworks were featured in a special report in Forbes about scientists and engineers who are "inventing the future".

She told Forbes that she is thinking beyond the relatively simple organisms bioengineers are currently creating:

"I don't want to spend a decade making a biofuel," says Shetty. "I want to spend five years doing something even bigger."

I suspect we'll be hearing more about Shetty and her work in the coming years.

Tags: Reshma Shetty, synthetic biology,

Technology Review's TR35

This month's issue of MIT Technology Review presents their annual list of the "top 35 young innovators under 35". Seven of the winners were women.

Biotech:

• Michelle Chang, Assistant Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, designs microbes that make fuel and drugs. Read Chang's TR35 profile.
• Milica Radisic, Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Toronto, develops methods of patching damaged hearts with embryonic stem cells. Read Radisic's TR35 profile.
  

Infotech:

• Tanzeem Choudhury, Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Dartmouth, works on methods of automatically inferring social networks. Read Choudhury's TR35 profile.
• Farinaz Koushanfar, Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rice University, is developing methods of "locking" microchips to prevent hardware piracy. Read Koushanfar's TR35 profile.
• Meredith Ringel Morris, computer scientist in the Adaptive Systems and Interaction Group at Microsoft Research, developed a plugin for Internet Explorer that allows groups to search collaboratively. Read Morris's T35 profile.
  

Nanotech:

• Aimée Rose, Principle Investigator at ICx Technologies, was awarded the TR35 Humanitarian Award for her work developing ultrasensitive portable chemical "sniffers" for the detection of explosives. Read Rose's TR35 Profile.
  
• Julia Greer, Assistant Professor of Materials Science at CalTech, developed and improved methods of studying the mechanical properties of nanoscale materials. Read Greer's TR35 profile.

Tags: Technology Review, TR35, women in science, women in engineering

Ultra-orthodox Israeli Women Earn Biotechnology Degrees

The Jerusalem Post has an interesting column about a science degree program designed especially for religious Jewish women.

Picture the graduates: 28 young, very religious women with mortar boards fitted snugly over head scarves and wigs, marching to the stage of the Hadassah College Jerusalem auditorium on Rehov Hanevi'im to receive their bachelor of science degrees. A stunning delegation of government representatives - the National Infrastructures minister who is also Deputy Prime Minister, the Religious Affairs minister, the chairman of the Knesset Education Committee - as well as prominent rabbis - sat in the front row to applaud the graduates. Supportive families filled the back rows, sitting in separate men's and women's sections. Baby carriages lined the aisles.

The three-year course is designed to provide the theoretical and technical background for entering the biological and medical research industry. What is unique is the special accommodations for the young women who grew up in strictly religious households and attended gender-segregated elementary and high schools. Most who want to pursue a higher education attend religious seminaries and become teachers, a less lucrative career than laboratory research. Designing a program for them required gender-segregated classrooms and labs, instructors willing to dress and speak "modestly", and childcare for the many women students who had infant children. And, not surprisingly, the students found some of the classroom material challenged their religious beliefs.

The students consulted their rabbi when evolution, a previously avoided subject, appeared on the curriculum. The class material wasn't altered, but he filled in the religious approach to the origins of species.

What is unclear to me - and not addressed in the article - is what happens when these women enter the workforce. The organizer of the program, Adina Bar-Shalom, was "determined to preserve the sheltered environment that was prized in the haredi world while providing higher education that wasn't watered down in any way." Will the new graduates expect that same "sheltered environment" at the biotech companies where they presumably wish to be employed? And will the more secular employees of those companies be required to adhere to their social rules? I imagine it will be difficult for these women, who are apparently the "breadwinners" of their families, to navigate what is a secular industry, at least here in the US. I'd be interested in learning more about Israeli biotech - leave a comment if you know more.

Photos of the graduation ceremony.

Tags: women in science, education, biotechnology, Israel

The "Macho Culture" of Science and Engineering

Earlier this month the Harvard Business Review released a research report titled "The Athena Factor: Reversing the Brain Drain in Science, Engineering, and Technology". Their stats that for the basis for the report:

* 41% Science, Engineering, and Technology (SET) professionals are female at career lower-rungs
* 52% quit SET jobs, peaking at 10 year career mark
* 5 major factors contribute to mid-career SET female attrition
* 13 companies share initiatives designed to keep women on track with SET careers
* 25% reduction in female attrition adds 220,000 to qualified SET labor pool

I haven't read the actual report ($295 is a bit beyond my budget, even with a money-back guarantee), but the contents have been widely reported in the mainstream media. So what did the they find? Tara Weiss summarized the issues for Forbes:

So why are women leaving? Many said they're often the only women on a project team or on a work site, amid a pervasive macho culture that's hostile and excludes them. Since so few are in the upper ranks, there aren't female mentors to shepherd women through challenges and support them for promotions.

In many cases they said they didn't even know how to get to the next level--it seems like a hidden code. And since these are jobs that require long hours--some experiments require scientists to take samples at regimented times 24 hours a day, seven days a week--it's nearly impossible to manage raising a family or caring for elderly parents.

Of course men have children and elderly parents too. What she didn't say - what's just assumed - is that the burden of raising a family and taken care of elderly parents falls to women. And it's not just not having a second job at home that's the problem, it's lack of respect from their male colleagues, as the New York Times reported*:

The 147-page report (which was sponsored by Alcoa, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, Pfizer and Cisco) is filled with tales of sexual harassment (63 percent of women say they experienced harassment on the job); and dismissive attitudes of male colleagues (53 percent said in order to succeed in their careers they had to “act like a man”); and a lack of mentors (51 percent of engineers say they lack one); and hours that suit men with wives at home but not working mothers (41 percent of technology workers says they need to be available “24/7”).

Be sure to read the article for the story of Josephine/Finn. Women who didn't participate in "locker room stuff" were also excluded from important information shared by their male colleagues - and networking and inside information are important for advancing your career.

Despite those problems, women don't seem to have a problem with the actual work performance:

They also do well at the start, with 75 percent of women age 25 to 29 being described as “superb,” “excellent” or “outstanding” on their performance reviews, words used for 61 percent of men in the same age group.

So it doesn't seem likely that the reason why women leave is that they are unable to perform their duties.

And biotech companies are better at keeping their female scientists, which is not that surprising, considering that women receive a much higher percentage of graduate degrees in the biological sciences than in the physical sciences or engineering. As the Chicago Tribune reported:

Of note is Cambridge, Mass.-based Genzyme, where 51 percent of scientists are women, as are 42 percent of senior managers. The publicly traded company has about 10,000 employees worldwide. The company's list of core values provides a clue. It includes principles common to many entrepreneurial companies—innovation, collaboration, drive—but topping Genzyme's list is compassion.

I'm not sure it's necessarily "compassion" that is their secret, unless that refers to an atmosphere where "macho" behavior is discouraged.

The bottom line is that it's an issue of economics. Companies are concerned about the brain drain of their experienced female employees, so Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and Cisco (among others) have begun to institute programs that they hope will help retain women scientists and engineers. The Genzyme example demonstrates that it certainly is possible for a successful technology-based company to include women at all levels of its work force. Only time will tell if other companies can replicate their success.

Sean at Cosmic Variance has some thoughts about the article (and a story about Richard Feynman's sexist behavior). See also Jake's post at Pure Pedantry.

* Apparently this article ran in the "Fashion & Style" section of the Times, rather than business section, which only really makes sense if you assume that anything having to do with women is a "fashion" issue.

Tags: gender gap, women in science, women in engineering

Women in Science Weekly News Roundup: July 13th Edition

Blog posts and news reports about women in science from the past week:

Karmen at Chaotic Utopia writes about how poor math teachers in high school made her assume that she couldn't learn math and science.

I gave up on math back in high school, in the middle of algebra. A few lousy teachers managed to convince me that I was ’bad’ at it. Looking back, I think I asked more questions than they were used to. The pure numbers and rote memorization didn’t satisfy me; I wanted other ways of looking at the formula. Instead of having a genuine curiosity about it, I came across as having struggles. I was frustrated, no doubt, but not for the reasons they assumed. By the time I graduated, that feeling had spread to the rest of my education. I felt out of place.

Based on the comments, she is far from the only one who only returned to science long after graduating from high school.


Naturejobs reports on the recent seminar organized by the UK Resource Centre for Women in Science, Engineering and Technology

Wendy Faulkner, of the Science Studies Unit at the University of Edinburgh, told delegates that the ways in which different individuals come to belong to the group may affect whether women are accepted. She suggested that workplace culture included styles of interacting, topics of conversation, humour and social circles. Crucially, said Faulkner, facets of masculine culture (such as football discussions and macho attitudes) mesh well with the culture of SET workplaces. Anecdotes from women she has interviewed suggested that they found it hard to fit in, whether because they couldn't take part in a joke or because they weren't seen as 'real' engineers. In some cases, male colleagues made inappropriate remarks. One woman said she wanted to report a culprit, but felt she had neither the confidence nor the support. Delegates at the meeting mutely mouthed recognition.

Sandra Porter at Discovering Biology in a Digital World writes about the "Life Science Centra" web site for people interested in biotechnology, but wonders why only one out of ten video profiles is a woman, since it's been her experience "that there are probably more women working in the biotech industry than males."

The Working Dad blog at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer writes about the University of Michigan study that shows the gender gap begins when "parents offer more math to their sons than daughters."

"They found that girls' interest in math decreases as their fathers' gender stereotypes increase, whereas boys' interest in math increases as their fathers' gender stereotypes increase," the University of Michigan said in a statement about the research.

CORDIS News reports that women professors at German universities has increased from 8% (in 1995) to 15% in 2006.

"Supporting excellence in science must not mean leaving behind half of our talent. Highly qualified women must be adequately integrated into the science system. We do not want to, and cannot afford to, relinquish their talent," the minister [Annette Schavan] added.

Meanwhile Austrian universities are setting aside 40% of government funding for research projects involving women.

'I am no fan of quotas, as quotas do not replace quality. But in this case it makes sense to put this nest egg at the disposal of young women researchers, as only when we give them the opportunity to prove what they can do will they have a chance to compete with men,' says Mr Hahn.

There was a press release from the government of the Republic of Botswana about the recent 35th Mathematics and Science Fair held at the University of Botswana.

[Former Education Minister] Dr [Gaositwe] Chiepe said the myth that Africans, particularly African women, are inherently incapable of understanding maths and science should be discarded.

Maths and Science, she said, are practical subjects, which do not depend on memory, guess work or wishful thinking.

"They require a critical, questioning mind that revels in the adventure of life and leaves no stone unturned to find out what, where, how and why."

Back around the world to the U.S.:

The Auburn Journal reports on Tech Trek Science Camp for Girls at California State University, Fresno.

The girls got a taste of college life while learning that math and science can be fun and good career choices. The students live in dormitories on campus during the camp and attend classes and mini-labs. Instructors include credentialed middle school teachers as well as women currently engaged professionally in science, math, and technology fields. The girls attended evening programs and field trips covering areas of study such as astronomy, engineering, marine biology, and environmental studies. AAUW volunteers serve as camp directors, nurses and chaperones.

The only comment left on the article was one complaining that it was "sexist" to only allow girls.

The San Jose Mercury News also has a bit about local girls sent to the Tech Trek program at Stanford University with the support of the local AAUW chapter.

Tags: science camp, women in science, gender gap, Tech Trek

In and Out of Science

CAD at VWXYNot? has two great posts that talk about why she got into science and, after getting a PhD, why she got out of research. (Also see R. Ford Denison's response "Who should consider grad school in science?")

CAD didn't have a single reason: it was the long hours, it was the low pay, it was the lack of job security, it was because she enjoyed writing more than doing experiments. There was nothing in her post that I found particularly surprising, because those are all reasons that I dropped out of research a decade ago. And, like CAD, I still love science, and still think (I think) like a scientist. There is a heated discussion going on over on ScienceBlogs about scientist-journalist interactions (see Cotournix's roundup and Janet Stemwedel's subsequent post. It seems to me that more people with science backgrounds going into science communication (as CAD plans to) can only improve the situation. Does working as a science communicator rather than a experimentalist mean that one is no longer a scientist? I'd like to think not.

ETA: CAD would like everyone to know that the her research on endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) does not support creationism, despite the claims of Reasons to Believe.

Tags: science communication, endogenous retroviruses, leaky pipeline

2007 L'Oreal USA Fellowships

As reported in Genetic Engineering & Technology News, the 2007 recipients of the L'Oreal USA Fellowships For Women in Science have been announced. The winners all received their Ph.D.s within the last couple of years. Here are the winners, with research descriptions from the press release (I've added information about their current position if I could find it):

-- Dr. Jaime D. Barnes University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico - earth scientist and geochemist, analyzing chlorine isotope ratios of rocks, minerals and volcanic gas to determine the source of chlorine emitted from active volcanoes. Dr. Barnes is identifying sources of chlorine in two very different subduction zones, and has recognized important isotopic fractionation processes between hydrochloric acid solutions and vapor, which have implications for the fundamental dissociation of hydrochlorine in aqueous solutions. Her work may hold the key to how volcanic eruptions occur and thus help scientists to predict future eruptions.

Barnes is currently a postdoc in the lab of Zachary Sharp.

-- Dr. Sarah Clinton - Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience Research Institute, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan - neuroscientist, studying the roles that nature and nurture play in shaping emotionality and emotionally-driven behaviors in rats. She is breeding two types of rats with differences in emotional behavior and comparing the impact of mothering-styles on their offspring's behavior and neural stress-circuitry. When complete, this body of work should yield a greater understanding of how genetic and environmental factors interact to shape inborn differences in emotionality which may, in turn, put certain individuals at risk for developing stress-induced psychiatric disorders.

It looks like she is currently working in the lab of Huda Akil.

-- Dr. Julie Huber - Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Massachusetts -oceanographer, researching the microbial ecology of deep-sea hydrothermal vents. Dr. Huber is using large insert DNA libraries to understand the metabolic capacity, genomic context and phylogenetic relationships of subseafloor communities. Her project applies a combined molecular diversity, metagenomic, and geochemical approach to provide a window into the microbial world. Dr. Huber's work will help researchers better understand how microbial populations function in and regulate the world's oceans.

Huber is currently a Research Associate at MBL. Her research is associated with NASA's Astrobiology Institute.

-- Dr. Maria Krisch - University of California, Irvine, Irvine, California - physical chemist, researching fundamental properties of the surfaces of liquid solutions. Dr. Krisch's area of focus is understanding liquid-vapor interfaces at the molecular level, which has been examined extensively with water-based solutions but not non-aqueous solutions. Her research focuses on liquid solutions of electrolytes, which are important in studying atmospheric chemistry. Her findings will have several practical applications, including bringing a much needed quantitative and physical picture to the role that aerosol particles play in pollution and climate change.

Krisch is a postdoc in John Hemminger's research group at Irvine.

-- Dr. Kim Woodrow - Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut - biomedical engineer, developing new drug delivery strategies and diagnostic tools for the monitoring and treatment of infectious diseases and cancer. Dr. Woodrow's research is doing this by using various bioactive peptides to engineer multifunctional nanoparticles. In particular, she is interested in designing biodegradable nanoparticles that will be efficiently delivered intracellularly once at a target site. This combination of molecular biology strategy and nanotechnology will likely translate into new technology for imaging and treating diseases.

Woodrow is a postdoc in the Yale biomedical engineering department, probably in the lab of W. Mark Saltzman.

Astronaut and physicist Sally Ride was presented the Women in Science Role Model Award "for her role in helping to shape the image of women in science." Ride currently is CEO of Sally Ride Science, which runs programs to encourage girls in science and technology.

A key part of our corporate mission is to make a difference in girls' lives, and in society's perceptions of their roles in technical fields. Our publications and out-of-school programs bring science to life and show kids that science is creative, collaborative, fascinating and fun.

The non-USA divisions of L'Oreal also award women science fellowships. For example, The Star online recently reported on the L’Oreal Malaysia For Women in Science Fellowships. The fellowships are for Malaysian female PhDs under the age of 35 working in materials science-related fields. Last year the winners were "Munirah Sha’ban, 26, for researching tissue engineering and regenerative medicine at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), Crystale Lim Siew Ying, 24 for researching molecular genetics at Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) and Dr Latifah Saiful Yazan, 35, researching a plant extract as a potential cancer-curing agent at UPM."

Also, in conjunction with UNESCO, L'Oreal awards fellowships to women scientists all over the world. The 2007 UNESCO-L'OREAL International Fellows are:

AFRICA:
Mestawet Taye Asfaw, food science, Ethiopia
Khady Nani Drame, plant biotechnology, Senegal
Christine Ouinsavi, forest biology, Benin

ARAB STATES:
Fatima Abbas, plant molecular biology, Sudan
Sarrah Ben M'Barek, plant biotechnology, Tunisia
Rhimou Bouhlal, marine biology, Morocco

ASIA PACIFIC
Fenny Dwivany, molecular biology, Indonesia
Barno Sultanova, biotechnology, Uzbekistan
Chawanee Thongpanchang, medicinal chemistry, Thailand

EUROPE/NORTH AMERICA
Irene Chiolo, biomedicine, Italy
Gisella Cruz Garcia, conservation biology, Netherlands
Petra Klepac, epidemiology, Croatia

LATIN AMERICA/CARIBBEAN
Venetia Briggs, behavioral ecology, Belize
Nancy Chandia, organic chemistry, Chile
Laura Echarte, crop physiology, Argentina

The application deadline for the 2008 awards is September 14, 2007.

As an aside: the L'Oreal web site is all in (mostly superfluous) flash. It makes Firefox run very s-l-o-w-l-y and they even have a multistep flash interface for subscribing to their RSS feed. Very annoying!
Tags: L'Oreal Fellowships, women in science

Sangeeta Bhatia: Biomedical Engineering and Nanotechnology

The April 16 issue of the Boston Globe has an interesting profile of MIT Associate Professor of Health Sciences and Technology and Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Sangeeta Bhatia, titled "Her studies link engineering, biology". The article begins by pointing out that she is doubly a minority in the engineering community:

It's a sad statement on gender equality that in Boston, it's easier to find a Yankees fan than a woman engineer. Dr. Sangeeta Bhatia, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, is a rarity on account of her gender and because she's a woman of color in a field that's primarily male. Not to mention that at 38, she's one of the most accomplished young scientists in Kendall Square.

Bhatia is the director of the Laboratory for Multiscale Regenerative Technologies, which is working to develop micro- and nanotechnology methods for tissue repair and regeneration. Projects include the development of nanoparticles that mimic blood platelets and can deliver chemotherapy to tumors, engineering special substrates to build artificial livers and grow stem cells.

Like so many women scientists and engineers, she wants to encourage girls to follow in her footsteps.

Being a role model for women aspiring to engineering careers is a source of pride for Bhatia. "I want young girls to think that engineering is great. A lot of them don't make a connection between this profession and their iPods. I want girls to know that you can make an impact and still have a life. I tuck my girls in at night. I take vacations. It's not an unattainable goal."

See also:

• "A Better Toxicity Test," Technology Review, March /April 2006
• "Sangeeta Bhatia Looks at Life's Architecture," The Scientist (subscription required)
• Global Indus Technovators Award 2004
• Technology Review 2003 Young Innovator
  

Tags: Sangeeta Bhatia, nanotechnology, tissue engineering (via Knight Science Journalism Tracker)

WITI

WITI, or Women in Technology International, was founded in 1989 as a professional organization for women "working in all sectors of technology".

WITI Hall of Fame is a web site designed to "recognize, honor, and promote the outstanding contribution women make to the scientific and technological communities that improve and evolve our society." The 2006 inductees were:

• Maria Azua, Vice President of Technology and Innovation for the IBM Corporation
• Francoise Barre-Sinoussi, Director of the Regulation of Retroviral Infections Unit, Institut Pasteur
• Kim Jones, Vice President of Global Education and Research, Sun Microsystems
• Nor Rae Spohn, Vice President, Business Imaging and Printing, Hewlett Packard
• Been-Jon Woo, Director, Technology Integration, Intel
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If you know a woman who fits the bill, you can download the nomination form here (pdf).