Recently I wrote about a webinar with Francis Su in which he discussed his career and the wisdom he has shared with students and peers. He mentioned the idea of finding the levers in your field, the opportunities to effect change. Last week, NIH Director and BioLogos founder Francis Collins announced that he would no longer accept invitations to conferences with all-male panels. Even though it will likely require minimal effort on his part, given his position he can likely apply significant leverage with a decision like … [Read more...] about Science Corner: Finding the Levers in Biomedicine
gender equality
Science Corner: The Prizes are in Bloom
Last fall I wrote about the Abel Prize ceremony because I was intrigued by the maze constructed for the occasion. I didn't intend to cover every winner, but I thought that Karen Uhlenbeck becoming the first woman to receive the honor warranted attention. Her work laid the foundation for a whole new branch of mathematics--geometric analysis--and she also provided critical tools to mathematical physicists for working with the Yang-Mills equations, which are central to the Standard Model of particle physics. Beyond her … [Read more...] about Science Corner: The Prizes are in Bloom
Science in Review — Movie Magic
Hollywood loves the idea of a genius. Amadeus, The Social Network, A Beauiful Mind, to name but a few cinematic portraits of brilliant men, men who apparently have a direct line to the rarified realm of mathematics and music, perhaps even the mind of God, while the rest of us dabble in the shadows. This year added The Imitation Game and The Theory of Everything. The latter features perhaps the ideal subject for an exploration of brilliance; ALS has removed any doubt that whatever Stephen Hawking is doing, it … [Read more...] about Science in Review — Movie Magic
Science Corner: All the Brilliant Ladies
It is both conventional wisdom and a statistical reality that gender representation is not equal in all STEM (science, technology, engineering & mathematics) disciplines. When I enrolled at Carnegie Mellon, a school known for its STEM programs, nearly twenty (!) years ago, the student body was well aware of the distributions. Variations on "There's a guy for every girl... and then another guy for that guy" or (ladies speaking about men) "The odds are good, but the goods are odd" circulated widely lest we forget. … [Read more...] about Science Corner: All the Brilliant Ladies