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Down with the Myth of the "Real" Scholar
Science is a wonderful privilege that I enjoy, and to me, scientific culture determines the quality of research, discovery and invention that we produce. Yet, as an academic culture we suffer from a persistent lack of diversity, and many negative cultural trends, like valuing competitiveness and workaholism over collaboration and wholistic thinking. Collective culture is a choice. While as an individual I feel very puny and ineffective at making any difference whatsoever, I believe that collectively we have the power to completely change culture. I learned this the day I wrote my first and only blog article, the awesomest-7-year-postdoc. Little did I know how many out there felt as I do, and are working to bring change. And I am proud to be part of that global network --- it is where some of the best scientific ideas are coming from, because the best people know there is no science without scientists.
Scientists and Civic Engagement
Sciencefor2020: A Boston area science activism website created and curated by researchers at Harvard, MIT, and BU.
Dan Rather's SciAm Guest Blog (Now, more than ever, we must stand up for Science, Nov 2016)
Scientific and Work Culture
Uri Alon's Materials for Nurturing Scientists
Talk Videos ("A Nurturing Vision of Science") and the famous Sunday-in-the-lab song
Website with articles on how to run a motivated lab, mentoring, giving talks, and creating PI peer groups
Angela DePace's Lab Philosophy Page (webpage)
My SciAm Blog Article on Work-Life balance and challenging Myths (blog)
Anita Woolley's research on Collective Intelligence in Human Teams
Performance of human teams is strongly predicted by group equality (and women), not by individual IQs.
Gender Equity and Diversity
Lean In, by Sheryl Sandberg (a must read book for Male faculty and Chairs/Deans)
Prof. Nancy Hopkins, and the MIT Transformation, Technology Review Article, Aug 2017
We should all be feminists, TED Talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
For Computer Science: The Harvey Mudd study (pdf), the Grace Hopper (GHC) and Tapia Conferences on Diversity in CS.
Some Harvard Gender Equity Work I've done
A Whitepaper I wrote with Margo Seltzer (whitepaper, 2011) to raise a donor fund for women/minorities in CS. Thanks to a wonderful Harvard alumna, Anne Popkin '87, this fund helped with the founding of WiCS, GIIM, WECODE, and sends over 40 Harvard undergraduates to GHC or Tapia every year since 2013!
A Report advocating the need for better Childcare at Harvard (report, spring 2015); as of 2017, the old Harvard childcare system is being consolidated and restructured, and there is space for a new daycare facility in Allston.
A Report on Retention Loss of Tenure-Track Women at Harvard (report, nov 2016; crimson news article dec 2017); also see recent Harvard Open Data Project article on faculty gender disparity by department, and Crimson articles on culture issues in the math department (article, editorial).
Science is a wonderful privilege that I enjoy, and to me, scientific culture determines the quality of research, discovery and invention that we produce. Yet, as an academic culture we suffer from a persistent lack of diversity, and many negative cultural trends, like valuing competitiveness and workaholism over collaboration and wholistic thinking. Collective culture is a choice. While as an individual I feel very puny and ineffective at making any difference whatsoever, I believe that collectively we have the power to completely change culture. I learned this the day I wrote my first and only blog article, the awesomest-7-year-postdoc. Little did I know how many out there felt as I do, and are working to bring change. And I am proud to be part of that global network --- it is where some of the best scientific ideas are coming from, because the best people know there is no science without scientists.
Scientists and Civic Engagement
Sciencefor2020: A Boston area science activism website created and curated by researchers at Harvard, MIT, and BU.
Dan Rather's SciAm Guest Blog (Now, more than ever, we must stand up for Science, Nov 2016)
Scientific and Work Culture
Uri Alon's Materials for Nurturing Scientists
Talk Videos ("A Nurturing Vision of Science") and the famous Sunday-in-the-lab song
Website with articles on how to run a motivated lab, mentoring, giving talks, and creating PI peer groups
Angela DePace's Lab Philosophy Page (webpage)
My SciAm Blog Article on Work-Life balance and challenging Myths (blog)
Anita Woolley's research on Collective Intelligence in Human Teams
Performance of human teams is strongly predicted by group equality (and women), not by individual IQs.
Gender Equity and Diversity
Lean In, by Sheryl Sandberg (a must read book for Male faculty and Chairs/Deans)
Prof. Nancy Hopkins, and the MIT Transformation, Technology Review Article, Aug 2017
We should all be feminists, TED Talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
For Computer Science: The Harvey Mudd study (pdf), the Grace Hopper (GHC) and Tapia Conferences on Diversity in CS.
Some Harvard Gender Equity Work I've done
A Whitepaper I wrote with Margo Seltzer (whitepaper, 2011) to raise a donor fund for women/minorities in CS. Thanks to a wonderful Harvard alumna, Anne Popkin '87, this fund helped with the founding of WiCS, GIIM, WECODE, and sends over 40 Harvard undergraduates to GHC or Tapia every year since 2013!
A Report advocating the need for better Childcare at Harvard (report, spring 2015); as of 2017, the old Harvard childcare system is being consolidated and restructured, and there is space for a new daycare facility in Allston.
A Report on Retention Loss of Tenure-Track Women at Harvard (report, nov 2016; crimson news article dec 2017); also see recent Harvard Open Data Project article on faculty gender disparity by department, and Crimson articles on culture issues in the math department (article, editorial).
