I Am a Technical Woman

OK, I'm not really that technical - but the women in this nifty video that's currently making the rounds definitely are:


The video was shot at the 2008 Grace Hopper Celebration and compiled by the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology.

The Anita Borg Institute has also posted biographical videos of their 2009 award winners and conference speakers:

Related links:

• 2009 Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, taking place right now in Tucson, Arizona.
  
• Anita Borg Institute 2009 Social Impact Award: Ekaterina Fedotova, director for Information Dissemination and Equal Access project for PH International.
• Anita Borg Institute 2009 Denice Denton Emerging Leader Award: Nadya Mason, assistant professor of physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
• Anita Borg Institute 2009 Change Agent Awards went to three women in Nigeria: Oreoluwa Somolu, Executive Director of the Women's Technology Empowerment Centre; Anne Ikiara, General Manager of Nairobits Trust; and Halima Ibrahim, Director of Mu'assassatul Mar'aatus Saliha Women's Skill Acquisition Centre.
  

(Video via the Geek Feminism Blog)
Tags: women in computer science, women in technology, Anita Borg Institute

Simone Peterson Hruda: Reflections on Black Women in Engineering

This past March Rutgers University hosted the Black Women Academics in the Ivory Tower Conference. Dr. Simone Peterson Hruda, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Florida A&M and Florida State gave a lecture on "Reflections on black women in engineering":



Some of the issues Hruda talks about:

• Of 65,000 bachelors degrees awarded in engineering, 3000 are to black students, and only 1000 or 1.6% go to black women students. Only 0.4% of engineering PhDs are awarded to black women.
  
• She points out that she is only one of about 350 black women who have gotten PhDs in engineering in the US, which is fewer than the number of engineering schools.
  
• When she was a graduate student, the white women students were upset that there weren't more women role models on the faculty. She didn't have the same expectation to find black women role models or mentors because she went in knowing there wouldn't be any.
  
• She has found that there are graduate students who prefer not to work for black women professors.

And there's a lot more about mentoring and teaching and how engineering is for anyone who is curious about how things work.

The Q & A session after the lecture:




Watch video of all the presentations and panel discussions on YouTube.

(via Prometheus 6)

Tags: women in engineering, black women in engineering, Simone Peterson Hruda

Caroline Moore: 14-year old Astronomer

One of the things that I find very cool about astronomy is that it is one of the few fields of science in which amateurs can make important discoveries. One such amateur astronomer is Caroline Moore, who, at age 14, was the youngest person to ever discover a supernova.

Here she is featured on the "Moment of Geek" segment of the Rachel Maddow show:


She's great to watch because she's so enthusiastic and does a good job explaining her part of the project. She hasn't decided whether to become a scientist or study medicine or sing or pursue some other career. That's the beauty of being a teenager - her whole life is in front of her.

(I also am amused that they posed her with a small pink telescope, which she explains is not what she used to make the discovery.)

Tags: women in science, astronomy, Caroline Moore

Women Scientists and Engineers on NOVA's scienceNOW

PBS has just made a bunch of their programs available online, including their science news show, NOVA scienceNOW. Each episode includes a profile of a scientist or engineer doing interesting research.

The segments are short and full of human interest, with "how we met" bits from the spouse, and emphasis on hobbies. There's some science too, of course, but the overall tone is light and breezy. The take home message is science is cool and so are scientists, which isn't a bad thing at all.

The women profiled in the full online episodes are:

Cynthia Breazeal, Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences and Director of the Robotic Life Group at the MIT Media Lab.

"A daring engineer designs robots to communicate and interact the way people do.

Watch the complete episode with the segment on Breazeal. Read the program's transcript.

More information:

• Cynthia Breazeal's scienceNOW page, where she answers viewer questions.
• Cynthia Breazeal's Website
• Cynthia Breazeal at the MIT Media Lab
  

Edith Widder, marine biologist and bioluminescence specialist, deep-sea explorer and founder of the Ocean Research & Conservation Association.

"Meet a marine biologist and explorer who has engineered new ways to spy on deep-sea creatures."

Watch the complete episode with the segment on Widder. Read the transcript.

More information:

• Edie Widder's scienceNOW profile, where she answers questions
  
• Edith Widder at ORCA: Ocean Research & Conservation Association
  

Other ScienceNOW segments are available online too, but only as Quicktime movies:

Yoky Matsuoka, neuroboticist (robotics + neuroscience) at the University of Washington.
Profile page (with video). Transcript.

Pardis Sabeti, Harvard geneticist and genomics expert.
Profile page (with video). Transcript

Bonnie Basler, Princeton biologist who studies how bacteria "talk".
Profile page (with video). Transcript.

Naomi Halas, Rice University nanotech expert.
Profile page (with video). Transcript.

Julie Schablitsky, archaeologist studying the Donner Party site and other areas important to the history of the American West.
Profile page (with video). Transcript.

Watching the videos (or reading the transcripts) of a bunch of the profiles, it's striking how much more the women profiled talked about their personal lives than the men. I don't know if that is because of the questions they were asked or not, but I was pretty surprised that Naomi Halas was asked point blank whether the reason she and her husband didn't have children because of her work. The answer: no, they wanted children, but she couldn't have them, which seems like a very personal revelation. When most the men were interviewed we don't even find out whether they have children or not, let alone whether they wanted to have kids. I realize that's likely because there is a social expectation is that "normal" women want to be mothers and are more interested in having a life outside the lab then men, but it's disappointing that the show's questions went in that direction.

Tags: scienceNOW, Cynthia Breazeal, Edith Widder

Why Science is Important

Alom Shaha, a science teacher at Camden School for Girls, asked scientists and educators to explain why they think science is important. He got a great range of responses, which he has compiled into a documentary. Many of the contributors seem to have moved from research to writing and teaching - I'm not sure that's indicative of anything other than the fact that educators are more likely to have both heard about the project and be comfortable with talking on video.

Some of the women in science who contributed:

• Kat Arney, "ex-scientist" working as a Science Information Officer at Cancer Research UK
• Robin Bell, Senior Research Scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University.
• Susan Blackmore, frelance writer and Visiting Lecturer at the University of the West of England, Bristol. Blackmore is best known for her theory of memetics.
  
• Rosie Coates, PhD student in chemistry at University College London.
• Beulah Garner, natural history curator at the Horniman Museum and Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society.
• Elaine Greaney, rocket scientist.
• Maya Hawes: a 12-year-old student
• Ann Lingard, novelist, former scientist, and founder of SciTalk - a site that helps writers connect with scientists.
• Becky Parker, Head of Physics at the Simon Langton Grammar School for Boys. She's a former lecturer in physics, a Fellow of the Institute of Physics, and has been awarded an MBE for her services to science.
• Jennifer Rohn, cell biologist and founder of LabLit.com.
• Rhian Salmon, PhD in Atmospheric Chemistry. She currently works as Education and Outreach Coordinator for the International Polar Year
• Tara Shears, particle physicist.
• Anna Smajdor, lecturer in Ethics at the University of East Anglia. She is particularly interested in the ethical aspects of science, medicine and technology.

Here's the final film (if you don't see it embedded below, click the link):

Why is Science Important? from Alom Shaha on Vimeo.

Tags: Why Science is Important, education

Dance Your Ph.D. Contest Winners

The winners of the annual AAAS Science Dance contest were just announced, and they are a lot of fun. Three of the four categories were won by women scientists:

The Graduate Student winner is Sue Lynn Lau, who is working on her Ph.D. at Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Sydney, Australia. She interpreted her thesis, "The role of vitamin D in beta-cell function" in a sort-of ballet. Lau "appears as the Sugarplum Fairy, delivering marshmallow glucose to four beta cell dancers. Meanwhile, a fifth dancer flings and twirls around the stage--representing the sunlight required for vitamin D biosynthesis." Read the full description of her thesis.


The Post-Doc winner is Miriam Sach, who completed her PhD, "Cerebral activation patterns induced by inflection of regular and irregular verbs with positron emission tomography. AS comparison between single subject and group analysis", at the University of Düsseldorf, Germany in 2004. She is currently a post-doc at UC San Diego. Read more about her research.


Finally, the Popular Choice winner was graduate student Markita Landry's "Sinle Molecule Measurements of Protelomerase TelK-DNA Complexes". Landry expects to complete here thesis at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, in 2011. Read more about her research.


Watch all the Runner-Up and other contestants' videos.

(via Podblack)
Tags: AAAS Science Dance Contest, video

Contribute to "Why is Science Important?"

Alom Shaha teaches science at an inner city comprehensive school in London. He has started a web project to help convince his students that science is important. He says:

Anyone who knows me will confirm that I wear my passion for science on my sleeve, but I don’t think that’s enough to convince all my students that science is important. Nor do I think, like some in my profession, that the importance of science is implicit in the courses we teach, that it will somehow seep into my students’ consciousness through the sheer number of hours they spend doing “science” at school.

So, I’ve started this film and blog project in which I want to ask the question “why is science important?” to people who feel the importance of science so deeply that they have dedicated their lives to it — working scientists, science writers and, of course, science teachers. I’m making a documentary, funded by The Wellcome Trust, and running this “collective blog” as I work on the film. Bits from the blog will appear in the film and bits of the film will appear on the blog. The idea is that the two will inform and enrich each other.

Shaha already has a number of responses by scientists posted on the "Why Is Science Important?" blog. He is hoping to find more women scientists to contribute, particularly video and audio items. General entries about why science is important to you are welcome, but he is also hoping to have "at least one piece that perhaps looked at why science can be important for women in particular."

Here is an entry from Rosie Coates, a PhD student in the Department of Chemistry at University College London.


If you are interested in contributing, contact Alom Shaha.

Tags: women in science, Why is science important, video

Our Humongous Sky and Other Topics

For some smart and interesting woman-on-woman science discussion, check out yesterday's edition of Bloggingheads.tv, where science writer Jennifer Ouellette (Cocktail Party Physics) and University of Washington Associate Professor of Astronomy Julianne Dalcanton (Cosmic Variance). They discuss the Hubble Space Telescope, astronauts, the comet named after Julianne, corpse museums, science on TV and teaching science.



They mention the following links:

• Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• Jennifer: Prime Time Science
• Julianne: Awful Hubble News
• Jennifer: Plastic People
• Jennifer: Exquisite Corpses
  

(If you can't see the embedded video, you can view and download the discussion at blogghingheads.tv)

Tags: bloggingheads.tv, Jennifer Ouellette, Julianne Dalcanto, astronomy,

She's Such a Geek @Google Talks

The AtGoogleTalks channel at YouTube has videos of a number of presentations by authors, politicians, and women (who don't fall into the other categories) at Google. Not surprisingly, many of the talks are aimed at the relatively geeky Google audience.

As part of the Authors@Google series Annalee Newitz, Charlie Anders, Ellen Spertus, & Jenn Shreve discuss She's Such a Geek: Women Write About Science, Technology, and Other Nerdy Stuff. Newitz and Anders were the book's editors, Spertus (a Google employee) and Shreve were contributors.

On a more technical level is the talk by University of Washington psychology professor Sapna Cheryan on "her research into the problems women face entering and remaining it the fields of CS and engineering." Watch Cheryan's presentation. (Unfortunately, the quality of this video isn't very good.)

(via my brother - thanks Bri!)
Tags: women in computer science, AtGoogleTalks, She's Such a Geek

Sally Ride, Climate Change and Science Education

On July 23 Dr. Sally Ride gave the keynote address at the "Earth Then, Earth Now: Our Changing Climate" conference for educators at the NOAA Science Center in Silver Spring, Maryland. The conference is part of the 25th anniversary celebration of Ride's first spaceflight.

Watch video from the conference. I particularly recommend the Q&A about climate change and science education with Ride and Dr. Kathy Sullivan, oceanographer and first American woman to walk in space (watch wmv).

While Ride was in Maryland, Ride spoke to a group of middle-school girls.

"I had parents who encouraged me to do whatever I wanted," Ride told a group of middle-schools girls at the Maryland Science Center last week.

"And I had two teachers - women science teachers - who told me that if you are good at science in seventh grade, you will be good at science in high school and you will be good at science in college.

"They told me, 'You don't get dumber as you get older.' They helped me have confidence."

And Ride is trying to pass on that confidence to middle school students: Sally Ride Science runs science festivals across the US, featuring hands-on activities for 5th-8th graders.

Tags: Sally Ride, Kathy Sullivan, climate change, science education

Women in Science at Big Think

Annelle Sheline at Big Think wrote to let me know that they have a series of interviews with women scientists. The interviewee list is very heavy on bioscientists, which is unfortunate, I think, since women are already relatively well represented in those fields. Anyway, I've linked to most of these before, but here they are collected in one handy post:


Dr. Shelley Ann des Etages is a senior principal scientist at Pfizer. She talks about being inspired by strong women, and hopes that other women will follow her into science.


Dr. Bonnie Bassler, professor of molecular biology at Princeton University, who discovered "Quorum Sensing" - a way of collaborating - in bacteria. She talks about the challenged associated with being a woman in science.

Bassler also talks about becoming a scientist.

Dr. Shirley Tilghman is President of Princeton University and a professor of molecular biology. She talks about her own experiences and women in science.


Dr. Paris Sabeti, human genome researcher and Assistant Professor at Harvard University talks about women in science


Other women in science and technology featured at the Big Think:

• Dr. Sarah Schlesinger, associate professor at The Rockefeller University who works on HIV vaccine research talks about working in a lab as a young person.
• Harvard particle physicist Lisa Randall talks about her research and science in general
• Chairman of EDventure Holdings talks about why there are so few women in technology, and explains what she thinks it takes for a woman to be a leader in technology
• Pfizer scientist Sonia Patel talks about her first science experiment
• Mary Lou Jepsen, a founder of One Laptop Per Child and Pixel Qi talks about computer design, children and science.

Related Posts:

• Think Science Now and Supporting Science Education
• Big Think: Shirley Tilghman on Women in Science
• Follow Up: Pardis Sabeti on ScienceNOW tomorrow
  

Tags: women in science, Big Think, video

Science Careers: Why Did You Become a Scientist?

The journal Science has a "Science Careers" Facebook profile that has posted brief videos of scientists talking about why they went into science.

Molecular biologist Fan-Li Chou, PhD is currently an AAAS Diplomacy Fellow and Assistant Trade Director, Africa and the Middle East, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service for the USDA. She's also on the a board member of the San Diego chapter of AWIS. She talks about her research focused on the genetics of disease and her hope for the future of science. There is a bit of "rah rah join AAAS and subscribe to Science", but it doesn't dominate the interview.


Pamela Clark is a graduate student in molecular and cell biology at Howard University. She talks about how her interest in science developed and what she finds exciting about science. Both of her parents are life scientists so she "grew up in the lab".





Katherine Socha, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Mathematics at St. Mary's College of Maryland. She talks about how she got interested in math and her research using "differential equations to describe the motion of water waves."





Note: You can also watch the videos at AAAS.org if you prefer to watch using RealPlayer rather than Flash.

(via The Urban Scientist's Science, Education and Society blog)
Tags: women in science, science careers, video

Think Science Now and Supporting Science Education

Big Think: Think Science Now is a project by pharmaceutical company Pfizer and other research organizations that video profiles 10 outstanding scientists. Once you have watched the videos (or even if you haven't), you can vote for your favorite. Pfizer will donate $1 per vote to science projects for classrooms through DonorsChoose.org.

The women scientists profiled so far:

• Sarah J. Schlesinger, associate professor at The Rockefeller University, who is working on an HIV vaccine
• Pardis Sabeti, assistant professor at Harvard University, who studies the evolution of the human genome
• Sonia Patel, pharmacologist at Pfizer
• Bonnie Bassler, professor of molecular biology at Princeton University, who works on methods to create new antimicrobial drugs
  

Note that the Think Science Now is only on week 7, so be sure to come back in a couple of weeks.

See DonorsChoose.org for more information on the programs waiting to be funded. You can also donate to the programs directly to get a special thanks.

Every donor receives an email "thank-you" message from the teacher, which is sent about a week after the project is fully funded.

In addition, if you complete a project's funding or give $100 or more, you will receive a "thank-you" package in the mail with student photos and hand-written cards; this usually arrives within 3-6 months of your donation.

(via Sandra at Discovering Biology in a Digital World)
Tags: Think Science Now, science education, Pfizer

Margaret Amsler: Antarctic Biologist

Today's video is an interview with Margaret Amsler, Research Assistant Member of the University of Alabama at Birmingham in Antarctica Team. In fact, she has been doing research in the Antarctic since the 1980s, when she was a student of the late Dr. Mary Alice McWhinnie. Amsler talks about how she became interested in research:

As a young girl I knew I wanted to be a marine biologist. I went to college at DePaul University and my advisor was a marine biologist. Guess where she worked? Yes - Antarctica! Her name was Dr. Mary Alice McWhinnie. She was one of the first females scientists to work in the Antarctic. She and another woman scientist share the distinction of of being the first female researchers to spend a winter in Antarctica at the largest U.S base called McMurdo Station. Dr. Mary Alice also worked many years at Palmer Station. She would often take her students as assistants. I feel so privledged to have been one of those lucky students. The Palmer biology lab is named for Dr. McWhinnie in recognition of all her contributions to Antarctic marine biology. The dedication plaque hangs in a busy hallway and serves to remind me how fortunate I am to have had Dr. Mary Alice in my life. [. . .]

In this video she talks about research and women in the Antarctic .

Last October an island in Antarctica was named after Margaret and her husband Charles Amsler, a UAB faculty member. For more first hand accounts of Antarctic research, check out the team's blog about last year's field work.

Tags: Margaret Amsler, antarctica, biology

Follow-up: Pardis Sabeti on ScienceNOW tomorrow

As a follow-up to my post on super cool geneticist Pardis Sabeti, you might want to check out the July 2nd episode of ScienceNOW on your local PBS station. If you miss it (or don't get PBS programming), you can watch the segment online, beginning July 3.

She's also got several videos up on Big Think, where she talks about being a woman in science and why she does what she does: because solving puzzles is fun.

Tags: Pardis Sabeti, ScienceNOW, PBS

Alice Ting: Innovative Chemist

MIT Associate Professor Alice Ting does beautiful science at the crossroads of chemistry and biology. She and her lab have developed a method of connecting small fluorescent labels to proteins in living cells. Named one of the 2006 Young Innovators by Technology Review, her work makes her one of the top young chemists in the US:

"Alice Ting is a true innovator and is one of the best chemists of her generation," says Timothy Swager, chair of MIT's chemistry department. "Scores of research groups around the world are already applying her methods." One of Ting's latest projects is to fluorescently image the junction between nerve cells, illuminating a biochemical process that appears to play a key role in learning and memory. So it may be possible one day to see an actual film of how a brain learns. "Mammalian cells are so beautiful and funky," says Ting--with the appreciation of a true director.

You can watch movies of living cells on the Ting Lab web site (there is also video of a recent talk she gave at Stanford).

Tags: Alice Ting, chemistry

Minority Women in Science

Karin Koch of Accidental Twins Productions sent me a link to a video she produced last year, "Minority Women in Science". According to the ATP blog, the inspiration for the film came from seeing women she knew struggle in their science careers:

The idea for the film Minority Women In Science developed from observing the obstacles and frustrations experienced by my sister and some friends of mine, as women academics in the United States. Most are struggling to be considered for tenure or tenure-track positions in their university departments.
[. . .]
On one occasion, I remember asking my sister: Why is there still a gender gap problem? I thought universities were research institutions where objectivity prevails and people, irrespective of gender or race, are hired and promoted based on merit, where everybody is competing on equal terms, at least in theory.
Little did I know how far reality diverges from theory.

Read her whole post for more background.

The video shows a roundtable discussion of four women scientists who were all born outside the United States, talking about their experiences as women scientists. The participants were:

• Saeqa Vrtilek, Senior Astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
• Irene Bosch, Assistant Professor of Medicine at theUniversity of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester
• Magaly Koch, Research Associate Professor,Center for Remote Sensing, Boston University
  
• Sucharita Gopal, Professor, Geography and Environment, Boston University.

The video premiered at last year's Cambridge Science Festival.



Tags: Minority Women in Science, Accidental Twins Productions, video

Carolyn Porco: Leader of the Cassini Imaging Team

Carolyn Porco received her PhD from CalTech in 1983 from the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, then joined the faculty of the University of Arizona and was made a member of the Voyager Imaging Team. In 1990 she was selected as the Imaging Team leader for the Cassini-Huygens mission, which is ongoing, and Director of the Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for OPerationS (CICLOPS). She is also currently a Senior Research Scientist at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

In 1991 Porco talked to Natalie Angier at the New York Times for an article about the lack of women in scientific leadership positions:

"Scientists can be like schoolyard toughs," said Dr. Caroline Porco, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona in Tucson who has been appointed head of NASA's Cassini spacecraft mission, scheduled to fly past Saturn in the early 21st century. "I grew up as the only girl with four brothers, but still I wasn't prepared for what I encountered at Stanford when I went there in 1974, as a graduate student. You'd present your results, and somebody would say, 'How did you get here? Why are you wasting my time? If you had half a brain you could have done that calculation.' "

What is more, said Dr. Porco, if she had had the inclination to respond in kind, "the guys would probably say, 'She's a pushy bitch.' "

And Porco does apparently have a reputation for aggressiveness (at least according to this 2004 article).

Peter Goldreich, who directed Porco's doctoral studies at Caltech, said she always had a "nose for discovery" and learned early on that, in a large enterprise such as the Voyager missions "men would tend to be much more aggressive than women" in speaking up at meetings. "She became much more determined to succeed and assert herself," he said.

Goldreich said Porco is not a good politician. "She tends to have a rocky relationship with quite a few people, even on the team," he said. "On the other hand, she gets things done. ... She's quite a presence."

"Carolyn defends the imaging team," said Andrew Ingersoll, a planetary scientist at Caltech. "She defends her instrument. You have to be a little abrasive."

Jonathan Lunine, a University of Arizona planetary scientist who was at Caltech as a graduate student with Porco, recalled that she managed to get access to Voyager data at a time when it was not widely available. "She was in a very intense and stressful position," he said, with "people who were more senior than her who really wanted their chance" at the data first. "Many grad students would fold up and go away," Lunine said.

I don't know if Porco is really "abrasive" or whether her assertiveness is interpreted negatively because she is woman*. In any case, she appears to be quite successful in her career, and does a lot of public presentations about her work. This is a talk she gave at TED in 2007 about landing on Titan and the ice jets of Enceladus:


And her work is her life**. As she told Wired News:

WN: What do you do in your free time that has least to do with astrophysics?

Porco: (Laughs) What free time? My work is my life. If I had more free time I would have learned to play the piano by now.

I did play the guitar and sing; I was in a band called The Estrogens: three females and one very brave guy. But really, Cassini has been so inspiring, I get so much fulfillment from that. I do wish I could go on vacation, though.

At least when she goes to work she knows the scenery will be gorgeous.

More Carolyn Porco Links:

• Exclusive Interview With Carolyn Porco - Star Trek's New Science Adviser (Feb. 2008)
• Beyond Belief: Carolyn Porco on Science & Religion: part 1, part 2, part 3 (YouTube Video)
• Edge: The Third Culture: Carolyn Porco
  

* see, for example, Science Daily on "People Accept Anger in Men, But Women Seen As Less Competent" and Female Science Professor's Post about "Aggressive Women"

** It seems like many of the scientists I've profiled are single-mindedly focused on their science. I don't know if it's really true that the most high profile scientists don't have lives outside of their work, if it's partially a cultural issue - scientists feel like they are expected to say that they have few other significant interests, or it's a reporting issue - profiles of scientists are written with the assumption that stereotype is true. All of those factors may come into play.

Tags: Carolyn Porco, women in science, planetary science

Pardis Sabeti, Cool Super Scientist

Sometimes you read about someone who has so many accomplishments it's hard to figure when they have time to sleep. Pardis Sabeti is one of those people. The profile of the 32-year old biological anthropologist in the April 25 issue of Science was pretty amazing:

• one of the first recipients of a L'Oreal Women in Science fellowship award
  
• developed a "novel test for natural selection in the human genome" which is being used in research on the evolution of resistance to malaria and Lassa fever
• as a postdoc had more than $600,000 of her own grant money, and is currently a co-investigator on a $2 million Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation grant
• named a Trailblazer by Science Spectrum magazine as one of the "top minorities in science" (read the interview)
  
• named by the London Daily Telegraph as one of the "top 100 living geniuses"
• panelist at this year's World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland
• received a Burroughs Wellcome Career Award in Biomedical Sciences
• recently hired as an assistant professor at the Harvard FAS Center for Systems Biology
  

In some ways she is the stereotypical driven genius scientist. She attended top schools: undergrad at MIT, Rhodes scholarship at Oxford University, graduation from Harvard Medical School with summa cum laude honors (presented to the "single most deserving student among a graduating class and is not automatically awarded every year"). Her research on the evolution of resistance to tropical diseases in affected human populations may eventually result in better vaccines and therapies. She is a nerd at heart. As she told Science:

"Even though I am gregarious, I interact more with [scientific] papers than with people. Deep down, I am just a math geek."

Sabeti, who moved to Florida with her family from Iran in 1979, attributes her academic success to her mother:

"My mother crated a summer camp in our house, where she would teach the children and make us do book reports. And my sister, who is 2 years older than me, would teach me and my cousin what she had learned in school."

But she also has a creative side. When she has time she writes music and performs with her band, Thousand Days. And she is making videos:

With support from the MIT Council for the Arts and a women-in-science program sponsored by L’Oreal, Dr. Sabeti is planning a series of music videos featuring Boston-based science luminaries such as Dr. Lander and artificial intelligence expert Marvin Minsky.
[. . .]
The videos, which Dr. Sabeti would like to distribute online, will use pop culture to show that science is cool. Her hope is that young viewers will want to learn more about the people in the videos.

You can see one of them when she is profiled on NOVA, scheduled to air in July.

For more about her research and her thoughts on women in science, check out the video below of her talk at Seed Magazine's Inspiration Festival in 2006:


She starts talking about women in science - particularly the L'Oreal Women in Science program - at about 14:44.

And the sleep thing? When Science spoke to Sabeti she was managing "only 2 hours of sleep each night, most of them inside a crumpled blue sleeping bag she keeps under a desk . . ."

Tags: Pardis Sabeti, biology, human genetics, women in science

Jennifer Hooper McCarty on the Colbert Report

One of the topics I find particularly interesting is science that intersects with history: engineering the pyramids, medical practices of medieval Europeans, ancient astronomy, and the like. Jennifer Hooper McCarty is a materials scientist who does exactly that kind of research. Her Ph.D. thesis was "based on her studies of recovered material from the RMS Titanic", which have now been turned into a book: What Really Sank the Titanic. (co-authored with NIST materials scientist Timothy Foecke). Here she is talking about it on last night's Colbert Report:

After completing her PhD, she was a post-doc in the Department of Materials at Oxford University, where she studied 18th through 20th century railroad materials and roman coins - and continued her Titanic research. After returning to the United States, she worked in the licensing and technology transfer office at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) in Portland, Oregon. She currently is a clinical assistant professor in the Department of Biomaterials and Biomechanics in the OHSU School of Dentistry. Her next research project will focus on the Eiffel Tower (which hopefully was put together using quality rivets).

(For more about the book and the Titanic rivet issue, see this April 15 article in the New York Times.)

Tags: Jennifer Hooper McCarty, materials science, Titanic