Last month we had our very first Hangout from our In The Spotlight series. This series will focus on individual interviews with women who are active in STEM fields. We will talk to them about their inspiration and motivation for embarking on their chosen career path. We kicked off this series by talking to Clarissa Silva, a behavioural psychologist.
Tag: Women in Science
How I Became a Computational Biologist
By Elena Giorgi, PhD
We have a guest post from Dr Elena Giorgi as part of our Role Models series. Elena describes how she became a computational biologist, and how she successfully dealt with two common problems in science; constant geographical flux and the ‘two body problem’.
As the daughter of a developmental biologist, growing up, I shared the house with fruit flies, newts, stick insects, and toads. And, as paradoxical as it may sound, I wanted nothing to do with biology. I majored in theoretical mathematics and I went on to graduate school determined to study differential topology—one of the most abstract branches of math.
Math is pure and beautiful. It’s like a Michelangelo painting—perfect all around. You can’t be wrong when you follow the steps dictated by logic.
I was accepted into graduate school in the U.S., and my husband arranged to finish his Ph.D. dissertation off site so we could both go. We fit all our belongings into two suitcases (that’s all we had) and left.
Everyday Sexism in Academia
We recently hosted another STEM Women Hangout discussing the issue of everyday sexism in academia. Our guests were Professor Rajini Rao (Johns Hopkins University, USA; content manager at stemwomen.net) and Dr. Tommy Leung (University of New England, Australia). Dr. Buddhini Samarasinghe and Dr. Zuleyka Zevallos co-hosted the hangout.
The Value of STEM: Heroic Women Who Inspired My Social Science
Continuing our Role Models series, STEM Women team member and sociologist Dr Zuleyka Zevallos shares how her primary school teachers and a series of children’s books inspired her scientific imagination. Reading stories of heroic women who used education and science to improve social justice helped Zuleyka see that girls, including those from minority groups who are denied rights, can and do make a positive impact on society.
The story of why I became interested in STEM starts when I migrated to Australia from Peru. I hadn’t yet turned eight and I didn’t speak any English. Thankfully, as luck would have it, we were enrolled into a highly progressive multicultural school in the inner city of Melbourne. My teachers, Mrs Rosa in Grade 3 and Miss Maria in Grade 4, worked hard to make non-English-speaking children like me feel included.
My teachers were amazing, celebrating every little task I mastered: from writing my first English sentence, to reading aloud to the class, to progressing through maths exercises. Our teachers took time to ensure that I did not get left behind. They also assigned us a tutor for extra English lessons for the first three months of school. They would look me in the eye and encourage me when I got the right answer, and I can remember once they stopped the class to announce that I has written a great short story. With small and large gestures, they imbued me with the courage and motivation to keep learning despite the language barrier. Read more
The Secrets of Life: Why I Got Into STEM
As part of our Role Models series, our team are sharing their inspiration for becoming involved in STEM. In this post, STEM Women creator, Dr Buddhini Samarasinghe, shares the creative inspiration for following her passion in molecular biology. Buddhini’s tale shows the importance of popular culture in igniting the scientific spark amongst young people.
I was 13 years old when I first read Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park. I hadn’t seen the movie, so I had no preconceptions what to expect with the book. But it was enough to hook me. It wasn’t the dinosaurs that fascinated me, but rather the description of DNA, the sequencing machines, the cloning…I was entranced. Looking back, it’s rather ironic considering Michael Crichton was notoriously anti-science, and his characters are often very critical of scientists. Yet, it was my gateway into molecular biology and I knew that this was what I wanted to do someday.
A few years later, I borrowed my mom’s copy of The Double Helix by James Watson. Although at the time I was unaware of the sad story of Rosalind Franklin, I was still fascinated by the narrative of what things were like at the Cavendish laboratory in Cambridge, the birthplace of molecular biology. From then I ravenously consumed books about science, ranging from Richard Dawkins to Thomas Kuhn; Stephen Hawking to Simon Singh. Read more
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