Joining the ranks of more than 60 institutions and graduate programmes across the United States, the biological sciences division of the University of Chicago in Illinois has cut a standard test from its graduate admissions requirements. The decision aims to boost the likelihood of admission for minority and female applicants by levelling the playing field. Read more
Just 34 of leading universities named in this year’s annual Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings have female presidents, down 1% from the 36 that were led by women in 2017. Read more
Calisi, a behavioural neuroscientist at the University of California, Davis, and a group of 45 other scientist-parents, have turned their frustrations into a call for action. In a paper published online Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers detail the shortcomings of past conferences and offer a blueprint for making conferences more welcoming and accessible to parents of young children. Read more
US academic institutions continue to enhance postdoctoral researcher experiences, but there is room for significant improvement, according to a 3 January report from the NPA in Rockville, Maryland. Read more
The study, the latest in a lengthy string of gender-disparity findings in academia, quantifies a type of discrimination to which female scientists have long objected—the low number of speaker invitations that they receive compared with male scientists. One of the most egregious examples—speaker panels comprised solely of Caucasian males—has spawned the hashtag #manel (for ‘male panel’) on Twitter. Read more
Female and Hispanic faculty representation in the United States increased significantly between 1992 and 2015, but more slowly for black and indigenous faculty members, according to a review study of personnel records from four large US land-grant institutions published in PLoS One . The small numbers of URM lack the data necessary to draw valid conclusions about retention. However, the study found, URM hiring is increasing, but not at the rate expected for the number of STEM doctoral degrees earned by the populations. Read more
Naturejobs journalism competition winner Jiska van der Reest … Read more
Rana Dajani, a molecular biologist based at Hashemite University in Zarqa, Jordan, developed the toolkit to inspire female researchers to build the networks they need to support, collaborate and advise one another as they move forward in their careers. Read more
A Google Doodle earlier this month celebrated the 100th birthday of Sir John Cornforth, the organic chemist whose work on the stereochemistry of enzyme-catalysed reactions earned him a Nobel Prize in 1975. Read more
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