Ada Lovelace Day: The women in science who inspire us – Part 1

Posted on 11 Oct 2016 by Mark Staniland

Ada Lovelace Day aims to raise the profile of women in science, technology, engineering and maths by encouraging people around the world to talk about the women whose work they admire. We asked staff from across Nature Research who has inspired them.

This is the first of two blogs we’re posting today to mark this milestone. You can read more about Ada Lovelace’s legacy here.

Abigail Klopper, Senior Editor, Nature Physics

Ewa Paluch is the sort of scientist I would have liked to have been. Her work on cell shape changes has led to a deeper understanding of how intracellular mechanics impacts cell migration and division.

But more than the work she does, I admire the way that she does it. Her lab is a healthy blend of biologists, chemists, physicists and computer scientists — and what she lacks in house she happily seeks through collaboration.

Ewa actually trained as a physicist, so she understands that physiology can’t be decoupled from physics. But her immersive approach means that she’s also sensitive to the questions that her fellow biologists want answered — something that tends to get lost in translation in interdisciplinary research. She subscribes to a new school of biophysics that capitalises on quantitative techniques and theory, and blurs the boundary between disciplines.

Sir Philip Campbell, Editor in Chief, Nature

For several years, we at Nature Research have run annual awards for outstanding scientific mentoring – two prizes per year, for lifetime achievement and for mid-career achievement. The nominations have been inspiring – there are people out there who are not only exceptional researchers but also exceptional sources of nurturing and inspiration for subsequent generations.

To celebrate Ada Lovelace Day, I want to highlight the past winners who are women. They inspire me but, above all, they have evidently provided great critically-minded guidance and inspiration to their graduate students and postdocs, who have themselves gone on to do fine things inside science and beyond.

Happily, this year’s competition has provided yet further female sources of inspiration, with some exceptional female nominees. Unfortunately, I cannot reveal the winners until the announcement in late November.

So congratulations – again! – to previous winners: Cliona O’Farrelly, Michela Matteoli, Barbara Demeneix and Rachel Webster.

Erika Pastrana, Team Leader, Nature Communications

Cori Bargmann is an outstanding scientist and an inspirational leader. She has made seminal contributions through her work in the genetic and neural mechanisms that control behavior in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. Bargmann and her colleagues have identified genes that affect animals’ responses to specific odors and discovered the circuits responsible for their chemosensory behavior.

Bargmann has received many awards and honors for her work, and more recently, has been one of the key leaders of the advisory committee for the NIH’s BRAIN Initiative. Here she has shown a unique capacity to bring scientist together, to develop a vision and to lead. Last month it was announced that Bargmann had been appointed the incoming president of science at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI).

I have met Cori several times, and seen her in discussions that set the framework of the BRAIN Initiative. I believe she is an inspiration for women – and for all scientists around the world.

Liesbet Lieben — Senior Editor, Nature Reviews Disease Primers

Liesbet Lieben_picture

When being asked to write about inspirational female scientists, Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier immediately come to mind.

By combining their strengths in microbiology and structural biology, they both have had an instrumental role in the discovery of the CRISPR-Cas9 system — a tool that can be used to change genetic material (DNA) with extreme precision and speed.

I’ve seen first-hand how the CRISPR-Cas9 system has transformed the way we do scientific experiments in the lab, and I can’t wait to see how it will revolutionise medicine.

Although there are still hurdles to overcome, this gene-editing tool shows great promise to cure diseases caused by mutations in DNA, such as cystic fibrosis.

Elisa De Ranieri – Head of Editorial Services, Nature branded journals

Dame Athene Donald springs to mind whenever someone mentions women in science. Throughout my studies she has inspired me and many others by being a champion of equality and diversity, in an area (physics) that is traditionally male-dominated.

Athene’s research bridges physics, biology and medicine. She and her eclectic team apply a range of concepts and techniques of soft matter physics to understand biological materials. Her career achievements stand out both for her scientific contributions as well as for her involvement in gender issues.

She is a Fellow of the Royal Society and was awarded the L’Oreal UNESCO for Women in Science award for Europe in 2009. Athene was also the Director of the University of Cambridge’s Women in Science, Engineering and Technology Initiative, and the University’s Gender Equality Champion, as well as a member of the European Research Council’s Working Group on Gender Balance.

Jill Adie, Science Communication Product Manager, Researcher Services

Jill

When I finally read the dog-eared copy of Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin’s biography a friend gave to me – foolishly not until after my PhD – I found myself in awe of her vibrant intellect, drive and resilience.

Her work laid the foundations for my own research. Dorothy studied the structure of biological molecules using a technique called X-ray crystallography, which was in its infancy at that time. She was incredibly passionate about what she did, and is credited with discovering the structures of penicillin, vitamin B12 and insulin. This led to a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1964.

Her aptitude and track record in determining 3D structures meant that during her career Dorothy worked alongside and mentored eminent scientists – she had a stellar academic career, but it was hard won. Even with the advent of World War Two, the demands of a busy family life, and the inherent difficulties of working in male-dominated academia, Dorothy continued to work on the subject she loved, and she remained scientifically active into her old age.

Part 2 of this series will be published today (11 Oct) at 17:00 BST / 12:00 EDT.

Empowering women scientists in MENA

Posted on 29 Sep 2016 by Pakinam Amer

Funded by the Islamic Development Bank and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, an international center for agriculture is promising to lay the ground work for a women empowerment initiative aimed at scientists, reportedly the first of its kind in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

The International Center for Biosaline Agriculture (ICBA) launched the design phase of the Young Arab Women Scientists Leadership Programme, dubbed Tamkeen (literally meaning empowerment in Arabic) this month.

Nature Middle East speaks to Setta Tutundjian, director of partnerships and knowledge management at ICBA, about the potential of this gender-specific science programme.

NME: How will your programme empower women involved in scientific research across the Middle East?

Setta Tutundjian: The objective of the Tamkeen program is to encourage young Arab women scientists to pursue a life-long career within the field of scientific research and development. The programme also aims to help women scientists interested in pursuing leadership positions to acquire the skills necessary to assume such leadership position within research institutes across the region.

The programme will develop leadership and soft skills among participants in key areas such as negotiation, human resource management, science writing, proposal writing, planning, presentation, mentoring, deeper understanding of self-esteem and so on.

We expect this to be achieved through a careful mix of classroom training, online training, coaching and mentoring.

NME: You’re still designing the programme, correct?

ST: Yes. And a critical part of this phase includes conducting focus group discussions and interviews with young women scientists to fully understand the challenges and opportunities they currently face within their careers, as well as to hear from them on the elements of an ideal leadership program that can help them address some of the challenges they face. We want to build a program primarily based around their needs and aspirations.

NME: By identifying the barriers and challenges, do you mean that you plan to launch country-specific investigations into how women are faring in the research and development field?

ST: Besides focus group discussions and interviews with the women, the design phase will also include an assessment of current academic programmes on offer in the region and whether these programmes cater to leadership development among graduates. There will also be an assessment of regional and international capacity building programmes to leverage learning and best practices.

During the coming months, a gender expert, a leadership expert and an expert in training activities will gather to prepare modules and produce a detailed framework of the leadership programme incorporating the results of the various assessments.

NME: I can imagine that women in a country like Egypt would be facing starkly different challenges than, say, the women of the United Arab Emirates …

ST: We do have a unique understanding of the region and the differences that exist between the different countries, specifically when it comes to research and development. Our focus group sessions will be divided among three sub-regions (the Gulf, the Levant and North Africa) in order to cater to the differences among the regions and target countries.

NME: How do you plan to measure progress?

ST: Measuring short-term results will include references to quantity and quality of workshops, participant feedback, network reach and similar metrics. Measuring long-terms results and impact will consider the number of women leaders over time in research institutions in the region, and the increase in number of scientific publications of women scientists.

Taking control of your career as a female physicist

Posted on 02 Dec 2015 by Jack Leeming

The Institute of Physics recently held an event on ‘Taking control of your career as a female physicist’. Naturejobs sent Jack Leeming to find out more.

Late, I sneak into the back of a room on the 4^th floor of a conference centre in central London, where 70 young female physicists are listening to Professor Dame Athene Donald speak. I try not to break their concentration as I find a chair. Professor Donald is relaxed and passionate, and manages to condense her advice – put into context through deeply personal, humorous anecdotes – into ten simple points to live by. Donald has had a hugely successful career (though, she admits, she is still embarrassed when people say it), making her way through the physics of metals and polymers, then the physics of food, then colloids, then starch, then proteins and
cellular biophysics, and finally ending up in her current area of the physics of biological and soft systems. She’s now the Master of Churchill College at Cambridge. It’s a quite the CV, and made all the more impressive by her achievements outside the world of academia.

Donald casually weaves her personal life into her career as she speaks. She has to leave early – her husband has been to the hospital recently for a bad leg, and still needs looking after. Her daughter did a placement when she was 17 and learnt a lot about office politics; apparently it was useful. Her message is one of pro-activity, self-confidence and overcoming failure. She’s been the gender equality champion for Cambridge University, has written for The Guardian, The Observer and The Conversation, and her blog – started in 2010 – has become enormously popular online. Somebody asks her what’s next. She says retirement. I don’t think anyone quite believes her. Continue reading →

Under the microscope: Women & science

Posted on 29 Apr 2014 by Mohammed Yahia

Pursuing a science career in the Arab world is challenging, but women embarking on this path may face more hurdles than their male peers.

Why are there very few models of women scientist that young researchers can aspire to? Why do women hardly ever land top managerial jobs in universities and research centres?

On 27 March, 2014, and as part of Egypt’s Science Month, Nature Middle East and Nature magazine’s Arabic Edition hosted a panel discussion with four prominent women researchers, at the American University in Cairo, to explore the issues women in the science industry face, and look at success stories.

The panel included Nagwa El-Badri, the department chair of biomedical sciences at Zewail University of Science and Technology, Rania Siam, the chair of the department of biology at the AUC, Rehab Abdallah, a research assistant at AUC and Sara Serag El Deen, an AUC graduate studying for her PhD in Harvard University.

You can watch the full event now on our YouTube channel, and join in the discussion in the comments below. Do you agree that women scientists in the Arab world face more obstacles than men? And if so, then how do you propose we solve this?

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Discrimination starts even before grad school, study finds

Posted on 25 Apr 2014 by Elizabeth Gibney

Most would acknowledge that women and minorities already face more hurdles in academia than their white, male peers. A lack of mentors, occasionally overt discrimination and the academy’s poor work-life balance, are well-documented issues. But now a study has suggested that these groups may be at a disadvantage even before the starting whistle sounds.

A study published on 22 April (and currently under review) looked at how likely faculty were to respond to a request to meet with a student to informally discuss potential research opportunities — a scenario picked as a proxy for the many informal events that could boost an academic career and which fall outside institutions’ formal checks and balances. They found — overwhelmingly — that professors of all groups were more likely to respond to white men than women and black, Hispanic, Indian or Chinese students. Academics at private universities and in subjects that pay more on average were the most unresponsive.

Katherine Milkman at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, along with colleagues Modupe Akinola of Columbia University in New York and Dolly Chugh of New York University, sent fake e-mails to 6,548 professors at 259 US institutions, pretending to be students wanting to discuss research opportunities before applying to a doctoral programme. The messages were identical, bar their fictional authors, whose names were picked for being recognizable by gender and ethnicity — ‘Steven Smith’ representing a white male, for example, and ‘Latoya Brown’ for a black female.

White men were more likely than women and minorities to receive a reply in every discipline except the fine arts, where the bias was reversed (see ‘Biased teachings’ above). Business showed the greatest disparity, with 87% of white males receiving a response compared to just 62% of female and minority students. In the sciences, faculty in engineering and computer sciences, life sciences and natural, physical sciences and maths all showed significant biases against minorities and women.

Broken down by group, the results were more nuanced. Asian students experienced the greatest bias, despite research showing that stereotypes about Asians in academia are generally positive, says Milkman. Among private university faculty the response rate for white men was 29 percentage points higher than for Chinese woman — the greatest disparity observed. Meanwhile in the natural and physical sciences and maths there was a small, though not statistically significant, bias in favour of Hispanic women.

The study found no relationship between representation of any group among faculty in a given discipline and the degree of bias that students faced when trying to interact with them. This means the findings cannot be attributed to the largely white, male academy preferring to associate with others like them, says Milkman. “One of our hypotheses was that more diverse departments would be less biased and we just don’t see it,” she adds. The only exception was among Chinese faculty, who were less likely than other faculty to discriminate against Chinese students.

Curt Rice, a professor at the University of Tromsø in Norway and head of Norway’s Committee for Gender Balance in Research, says that the result that women and minorities are as biased as white men is not surprising. They mirror a 2012 study, by researchers at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, which showed that science faculty of both sexes show unconscious biases against women in hiring and pay decisions. The problem — says Rice — is implicit rather than explicit bias. “We’re talking about the absorbed effect of cultural stereotypes that lead to the formation of biases,” says Rice. “It’s no surprise they’re held by all of us because they’re subconscious and the result of cultural stereotypes that we’re all exposed to.”

Comparing results across disciplines, the team found more intriguing effects. The more highly paid faculty are on average (by subject), the greater the difference in response rate between white male and other students. “For every US$13,000 increase in salary, we see a drop of 5 percentage points in the response rate when compared to Caucasian males,” says Milkman. She links the finding to studies that recently found that wealthy, high-status people tended to be less empathetic and more self-focused. Biases were also more prevalent in private institutions than public ones, she adds.

Although the study looks at only one tiny step in the path to a successful academic career, Rice thinks the compound effect of many situations like it could well help explain why we find so few women and people from minority backgrounds at professor level. Milkman agrees: “This is a small moment — it’s one time someone’s reaching out and looking for guidance and encouragement. But if every time you do this happens to you, that’s going to add up.”

Women in science: Leak in the pipeline

Posted on 26 Mar 2014 by Subhra Priyadarshini

A new study by UNESCO outlining the involvement of women in science has some stark figures for India. The Unesco Institute for Statistics (UIS) has put together an interactive infographic on women in science to highlight the global gender gap in higher education and scientific research. They aptly call it the “leaky pipeline”.

Data compiled from across the world shows more women are enrolling in university but relatively few pursue careers in research. There are many leaks in the pipeline – from stereotypes encountered by girls to the family-caring responsibilities and bias women may face when choosing a career.

In India, according to the UIS data, 44% of bachelor students are female while 41% get till the doctoral level. What happens beyond that has not been chronicled for India, though there are figures from many other countries in the dataset. Women researchers show a tendency to work in the academic and government sectors while men dominate the private research sector, which offers better salaries and opportunities for advancement.

Many factors compel women to drop off the research radar.

In most countries, women researchers seem to be focusing on the social sciences and remain under-represented in engineering and technology. Unesco suggests that in order to level the playing field, girls must be encouraged to pursue math and science. Globally, just one in five countries had achieved somewhat of a gender parity with 45% to 55% of their researchers being women.

In all, just about 30% of the world’s researchers were found to be women. A growing number of women enrol in universities but many opt out at the highest levels required for a research career. There were some surprising exceptions though. For example, in Bolivia, women accounted for 63% researchers, compared to France with a rate of 26% or Ethiopia at 8%.

A Nature Special on Women in Science last year also came up with similar stories. It spoke about how women are deterred from pursuing a career in science at the highest levels and what must be done to address the reasons behind this potential waste of human talent. The special issue showed how despite improvements, female scientists continue to face discrimination, unequal pay and funding disparities. Also, why women in biotechnology are stilled barred from the boardroom.

Nature India‘s previous coverage has looked at what India is doing to woo its women scientists, why women scientists in India need affirmative action and why we can’t ignore women’s role in science. The Nature India forum has also seen heated exchanges and concrete suggestions on how the leaky pipeline can be fixed.

The gender inequality in science can not be emphasised enough. And call for action can never be too late.

Women’s gap from education to research

Posted on 06 Mar 2014 by Mohammed Yahia

More women than ever before are pursuing education in science around the world, and the Arab world is no exception. However, the number of women who pursue research careers after education quickly trickles down, especially in the private sector. In the Arab world, this is mainly due to cultural norms that force women to forego time-consuming research careers for family-raising responsibilities.

The private sector is often not keen on hiring women due to stereotypes of poor commitment and the fact they may require long holidays due to pregnancy and labour, which are seen as “problems” not encountered when hiring men.

However, there are some positive signs in the region. According to UNESCO, 38% of researchers in the region are women – more than the North American and West European average of 32% and the world average of 30%.

Tunisia and Egypt topped the list of Arab states with the least disparity between the sexes in research, with 47% and 42% of researchers being women respectively. This comes in stark contrast to Saudi Arabia where only 1% of researchers are women, says UNESCO. Jordan, Libya, Oman and Palestine were all below 25% as well.

To mark International Women’s Day, the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) has produced a cool interactive infograph on the status of women in research broken down by region and countries, with information about the different fields of research as well as the different sectors they are employed in. You can visit it by clicking on the image below, then start exploring the petri dishes.

Why does the new LEGO scientist work all night?

Posted on 24 Oct 2013 by Catherine de Lange

By Carolyn Beans, contributor

Professor C. Bodin, LEGO’s newest scientist minifigure, has a lot going for her. She built a fascinating career around finding “new and interesting ways to combine things together.” Her hard work was rewarded with a Nobrick Prize. She looks smart and professional in her crisp white lab coat and glasses. And last month, her very existence was met with a deluge of Tweets and blog posts as male and female science enthusiasts alike welcomed a long-over-due female scientist to the LEGO minifigure collection. Here is a LEGO character that will inspire girls to follow her away from pink-and-purple-sparkle-covered pass-times and into the lab.

The only trouble is that if girls actually read Professor C. Bodin’s bio, they’ll likely wonder whether they will ever get to leave that lab. According to Professor C. Bodin’s LEGO page, “She’ll spend all night in her lab analyzing how to connect bricks of different sizes and shapes…”

Prof Bodin{credit}Maia Weinstock {/credit}

I appreciate that LEGO wants to describe their new scientist as a hardworking professional. But I worry that we may lose budding scientists if we continue to depict STEM researchers as people who have no lives outside of their careers. Why can’t Professor C. Bodin do groundbreaking work during the day and still make it to her hip hop class or book club at night? Continue reading →

Achieving gender equality in academic careers: Queen’s case study

Posted on 04 May 2012 by Rachel Bowden

Does your university make provision for maternity leave in its PhD studentships? Does it insist on female representation on all committees, or run a buddy system linking female postdocs to female PhD students? These are just some of the initiatives in place at Queen’s University Belfast, which was recently named as the lead university in the United Kingdom for tackling the unequal representation of women in science.

Queen’s has been given a ‘Silver University’ award by the Athena SWAN Charter, a recognition scheme that rewards UK universities committed to advancing and promoting the careers of women working in science, engineering and technology (SET). It’s the highest level of award currently held in the United Kingdom, and Queen’s is the only university with the accolade. Tom Millar, dean of the faculty of engineering and physical sciences, says the university’s gender-equality initiatives are “part and parcel” of the regular business of the institution. “It is this integration, or mainstreaming, of an equal opportunities focus that has made our efforts sustainable,” he says.

Other examples of initiatives at Queen’s include:

Personal mentoring programme for female postdocs and academic staff
Monitoring of processes at all stages of recruitment and career development
Regular surveys, courses and workshops on aspects of academic careers
Profiling of female scientists on websites and in print
Teaching-free semester for staff returning from maternity leave

Yvonne Galligan, director of Queen’s Gender Initiative — which has been the main driver of recent progress since it was established in 1999 — says the university’s ambition is to create a gender-equal environment for staff and students. “Winning the institutional Silver award was not an ‘event’,” she says. “It is [one] stage in a process.”

To achieve a Gold award, the highest possible, Millar and Galligan say the university must extend its gender-equality success to its arts and humanities departments and do more to tackle the loss of female academics at key career stages — the so-called ‘leaky pipeline’. It’s a process that will take time — Peter Mason from Athena SWAN explains that to be awarded Gold, a university would need the majority of its departments to hold individual Gold departmental awards. Currently only the department of chemistry at the University of York is at this level.

While Queen’s works towards this goal, Millar is understandably proud of the university’s achievement to date: “It is recognition of the enormous contribution and commitment, for more than a decade, of many staff, academic and non-academic, male and female.”

How does Queen’s compare to your institution for gender equality? Could you see similar initiatives being implemented where you work? Let us know your thoughts.

Women increase their share of biological science PhDs in United States

Posted on 13 Jan 2012 by Rachel Bowden

Women continue to be awarded the majority of biological science PhDs in the United States, according to the latest data from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Statistics released this week show that 52% of biological science PhDs were awarded to women in 2009, the second year running that more women than men received PhDs in the field and up by almost
2 percentage points from the previous year.

In contrast, less than a third of PhDs in mathematics and statistics or physical sciences were awarded to women in 2009, although the proportion of PhDs awarded to women has increased in all fields of science and engineering since 2001.

The NSF also asked doctorate recipients about their post-PhD plans, and found that of those who had a definite plan, men were more likely to be heading into the industry sector than women.

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