L'Oreal-UNESCO USA Fellowships Awarded

The five postdoctoral researchers who were awarded 2009 L'Oreal USA Fellowships for Women in Science were honored at a special ceremony at the American Museum of Natural History on Thursday. Each of the winners will receive a $60,000 grant for scientific research and career development. The awardees:

Dr. Beena Kalisky: Kalisky is a postdoc in the lab of Kathyrn A. Moler in the Department of Applied Stanford University. According to the press release, she is "developing a new system for detection and characterization of individual nanomagnets. The instrument designed will scan over a large number of particles and individually measure their magnetic properties. This will help in the gathering of pertinent information for the exploration of the nanomagnets' possible applications."

Dr. Aster Kammrath: Kammrath is a postdoc in the lab of Frank Keutsch in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. According to the press release her research focuses on "the pathways by which molecules emitted by human activity or natural sources are involved in climate change and pollution problems. This work aims to help set appropriate emissions controls to minimize the production of carbon dioxide, other greenhouse gases and aerosol, which could help reduce respiratory problems."

Kammrath has said that it was her mother who helped her discover science:

"She instilled in me a passion for solving problems and understanding the real-world application of the scientific method," she says.

Dr. Nozomi Nishimura: Nishimura is a postdoc in the lab of Chris B. Schaffer in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Cornell University. Her research involves "testing the role that blood vessel dysfunction plays in triggering Alzheimer's disease. This research will look at how clots or bleeds in the smallest blood vessels in the brain could seed the accumulation of A-beta proteins, an indication of plaque in the brain which often occurs in Alzheimer's patients."

Dr. Tiffany Santos: Santos is a postdoc in the Electronic & Magnetic Materials & Devices division of the Center for Nanoscale Materials at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. Her research involves "a class of materials called transition metal oxides, with a wide array of properties, that have numerous potential applications. This research aims to uncover new materials, which could potentially help reduce power consumption and increase the energy efficiency of information technologies, such as data storage devices and memory chips."

Dr. Erika Sudderth: Sudderth is a postdoc in the lab of David Ackerly in the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of California at Berkeley (the press release says Brown University, so she may have recently moved). Her research is focused on understanding "the constraints, thresholds and limits of ecological responses to precipitation, which is arguably the most important controller of ecosystem processes. This research aims to understand the mechanisms driving ecosystem responses to climate change."

(I plan to update the post as the various institutions release additional information)

For more information about the awards, see:

• L'Oréal-USA For Women in Science Official Web Site (requires Flash)
• L'Oréal USA For Women in Science on Facebook

Tags: women in science, L'Oreal-UNESCO Fellowships

Top Women Scientists of 2008

It's the end of the year and all the magazines are publishing their "best of" lists - including the top scientists. Here's a round-up of women scientists who have been profiled:

Anne Wojcicki and Linda Avey, co-founders of biotech startup 23andMe were among Popular Mechanics' "The Internet's Top 10 Most Controversial Figures of 2008"

Discover named Senator Barbara Mikulski, chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, and Science as one of the "10 most influential people in science". No, she's not a scientist herself, but she regularly fights for federal science funding.

Discover named University of Alaska ecologist Katey Walter, Harvard stem cell biology Amy Wagers, UC Berkeley molecular biologist Nicole King, and MIT astrophysicist Sara Seager among the "20 best brains under 40"

Discover named Anastasia Roda, 19, and Isha Jain, 17, both of Pennsylvania, among their "Teen Genius: 5 Promising Scientists under 20"

Seed profiles physicist and systems biologist Aleksandra M. Walczak, virologist Ilaria Capua , geneticist Heejung Kim, user of "astronomical medicine" Michelle Borkin, and materials scientist Neri Oxman, in their feature on 2008's Revolutionary Minds

Popular Science profiled materials scientist Kristi Anseth, neuroscientist Rebecca Saxe, and chemist Melanie Sanford, in their Brilliant 10 Class of 2008

Tags: women in science

Technology Review's TR35

This month's issue of MIT Technology Review presents their annual list of the "top 35 young innovators under 35". Seven of the winners were women.

Biotech:

• Michelle Chang, Assistant Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, designs microbes that make fuel and drugs. Read Chang's TR35 profile.
• Milica Radisic, Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Toronto, develops methods of patching damaged hearts with embryonic stem cells. Read Radisic's TR35 profile.
  

Infotech:

• Tanzeem Choudhury, Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Dartmouth, works on methods of automatically inferring social networks. Read Choudhury's TR35 profile.
• Farinaz Koushanfar, Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rice University, is developing methods of "locking" microchips to prevent hardware piracy. Read Koushanfar's TR35 profile.
• Meredith Ringel Morris, computer scientist in the Adaptive Systems and Interaction Group at Microsoft Research, developed a plugin for Internet Explorer that allows groups to search collaboratively. Read Morris's T35 profile.
  

Nanotech:

• Aimée Rose, Principle Investigator at ICx Technologies, was awarded the TR35 Humanitarian Award for her work developing ultrasensitive portable chemical "sniffers" for the detection of explosives. Read Rose's TR35 Profile.
  
• Julia Greer, Assistant Professor of Materials Science at CalTech, developed and improved methods of studying the mechanical properties of nanoscale materials. Read Greer's TR35 profile.

Tags: Technology Review, TR35, women in science, women in engineering

Ice Stories

The Exploratorium has collected a bunch of blogs under the heading "Ice Stores: Dispatches from Polar Scientists", which showcases scientists working at the poles. Not surprisingly the research is seasonal: scientists work in Antarctica during the Northern Hemisphere's winter (so summer at the South Pole), while research in the Arctic is going on now. A number of women scientists are part of the effort.

In the Arctic:

• Anne Jensen "lives and works in Barrow, Alaska. Anne’s field studies have taken her throughout much of Alaska for the past 25 years. Her research in human adaptation in the Arctic includes a long-term project at the prehistoric village site of Nuvuk, where the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas come together. Historic Nuvuk is also the site of a 1,000-year-old burial ground. Hundreds of gravesites are endangered there by erosion, which sometimes removes 50 feet of coastal frontage in a single storm."
• Amy Breen "has studied the impacts of climate change on Arctic plant communities for nearly a decade. She is a PhD candidate in the Institute of Arctic Biology at the University of Alaska, and a member of a team of circumpolar scientists participating in the International Tundra Experiment (ITEX). In July 2008, she’ll begin blogging from the Toolik Field Station, her field site in the northern foothills of the Brooks Range in Alaska."
• Laura Thomas "is an archaeologist and full-time resident of Barrow, Alaska. As the Field and Lab Director for the Nuvuk Archaeology Project, Laura devotes her time to the long-term excavation of a 1,000-year-old burial ground significantly threatened by erosion. Born and raised amongst the rich geological history of Ontario, Canada, Laura has held a lifelong interest in prehistory and how past peoples adapted to their environments. She is a graduate of the University of Toronto, and describes her archaeological work in the Arctic as 'living the dream.'"
• Zoe Courville "studies snow and ice in polar regions. She received her PhD in material science from the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College in 2007. She is currently employed as a research mechanical engineer at the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Lab in Hanover, New Hampshire. She loves working in the polar ice caps and sharing her experiences with others."

In the Antarctic:

• Cassandra Brooks "is a graduate student in Marine Science at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories (MLML) in California who has studied Antarctic marine resources for the last four years both at MLML and with the Antarctic Marine Living Resources Program (AMLR). Cassandra’s work focuses on life history and population structure of Antarctic toothfish. Her goal is to provide information on their age, growth, and spatial distribution in order to facilitate sustainable management of this important Antarctic species."
• Christina Riesselman "has traveled to Antarctica three times in pursuit of fossil diatoms that can unlock the secrets of past climate change. She's a Ph.D. student at Stanford University's Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences and a member of the international team of scientists working on the ANDRILL sediment coring project."
• Nadine Quintana Krupinski "studies the dynamics of ice sheets and the waterways that exist under glaciers. She's a glaciology Ph.D. student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and enjoys working on isolated glaciers in the world's polar regions."
• Maria Vernet "has been a primary investigator on thirteen research cruises off the Western Antarctic Peninsula, exploring one of the coldest marine ecosystems on earth. She's a marine biologist from Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California. During winter 2008, she studied the ecology of phytoplankton and its role within the marine ecosystem at the Palmer Station Long-Term Ecological Research Network (LTER). From May 31 to June 20, 2008, Maria is on board the Nathaniel B. Palmer icebreaker in the northwest Weddell Sea, collecting plankton samples from under and around large free-floating icebergs that have broken off from the Antarctic Ice shelf."
• Kathryn Schaffer Miknaitis "dreamed of becoming an artist but fell in love with physics in graduate school. She is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Chicago's Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics and pursues questions about the origin and history of the universe on the South Pole Telescope team. She arrived at the South Pole in November 2007 and blogged about her work on the telescope until she left in February 2008."

If you click on the scientists' names, you'll not only get to their blogs, but you can learn more information about the projects they are working on. It's an interesting glimpse into doing scientific research under extreme environmental conditions.

Tags: women in science, Arctic research, Antarctic research, blogs

Alia Sabur: World's Youngest Professor

Materials scientist Alia Sabur has been breaking records for nearly a decade:

She was the youngest student to attend college, when she was 10, and four years later, the youngest woman to earn a Bachelor of Science degree in Applied Mathematics from Stony Brook University. By 18, she had her doctorate degree in Materials Science and Engineering.

Last semester she taught math and physics classes at Southern University in New Orleans. And now? She's a professor in the Department of Advanced Technology Fusion at Konkuk University in Seoul, South Korea, and Research Liaison with her alma mater, Stony Brook University. Her hiring at age 18 makes her the youngest college professor in history. In addition to teaching, she'll also pursue research in developing nanotubes for use as cellular probes.

She told Voice of America that she wants to help dispel the stereotype that girls aren't as good at math and science as boys.

"I'm hoping to be a role model for other girls," she says, "and inspire them to go into those subjects so that they can prove the same thing, that girls are good at math and science and that you don't have to be really nerdy or weird to be successful in them."

And she is also a musician - she studied the clarinet at Juilliard School of Music the same year she started college, and made her solo debut in front of an orchestra at age 11 - and has a black belt in tae kwon do.

Amazing!

• Listen to the story on Voice of America.
• Alia Sabur on the Today Show
  
• AliaSabur.com

(via Zuska)

Tags: Alia Sabur

Jennifer Hooper McCarty on the Colbert Report

One of the topics I find particularly interesting is science that intersects with history: engineering the pyramids, medical practices of medieval Europeans, ancient astronomy, and the like. Jennifer Hooper McCarty is a materials scientist who does exactly that kind of research. Her Ph.D. thesis was "based on her studies of recovered material from the RMS Titanic", which have now been turned into a book: What Really Sank the Titanic. (co-authored with NIST materials scientist Timothy Foecke). Here she is talking about it on last night's Colbert Report:


After completing her PhD, she was a post-doc in the Department of Materials at Oxford University, where she studied 18th through 20th century railroad materials and roman coins - and continued her Titanic research. After returning to the United States, she worked in the licensing and technology transfer office at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) in Portland, Oregon. She currently is a clinical assistant professor in the Department of Biomaterials and Biomechanics in the OHSU School of Dentistry. Her next research project will focus on the Eiffel Tower (which hopefully was put together using quality rivets).

(For more about the book and the Titanic rivet issue, see this April 15 article in the New York Times.)

Tags: Jennifer Hooper McCarty, materials science, Titanic

Gray-haired woman has semiconductor patent - isn't that adorable?

There is something about a woman's hair turning gray that apparently makes some people assume that she spends her days baking and knitting afghans. For example, take the headline of this post by Jesus Diaz at Gizmodo: Grandpatent: Old Lady Sues Tech Giants for Patents, Bakes Cakes with Lasers. Is the article about an elderly woman who developed a laser in her garage? Nope, it's about 80-year-old Columbia University Professor Emerita Gertrude Neumark Rothschild. Professor Neumark (she doesn't appear to use "Rothschild" professionally) was a staff physicist at Philips Laboratories from 1960 until 1985, then joined the faculty of the Materials Science department at Columbia.

At issue are two patents (U.S. Patent Nos. 4,904,618 and 5,252,499) that cover methods for making semiconductors used in light emitting diodes (LEDs) and laser diodes. As Forbes reports:

Professor Neumark is one of the world's foremost experts on doping wide band-gap semiconductors. During research work at Columbia University, she conceived of the doping process that has had a significant impact on the quality of consumer products. In addition to the blue laser, her patented processes to create blue and ultraviolet LEDs are now used in a large number of products ranging from flat screen TVs, computers, traffic lights, instrument panels, as the background color for mobile-phone screens, in multicolor displays and in numerous other lighting applications.

Last week Neumark's infringement suit against Philips Lumileds was settled with undisclosed terms. In February Neumark filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission, claiming that a number of imported electronics - including Blue-ray disc players, handheld mobile devices, and traffic lights - infringed her patents. The latest news that the ITC is launching an investigation into 30 companies, including Sony, Motorola, and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co (maker of Panasonic) for patent infringement.

So the story here isn't about a cake-baking granny at all (surprise!). It's about a materials scientist going after big companies for patent infringement. Some of the Gizmodo commenters do protest the headline as disrespectful and sexist, but they are shot down because "old lady" stereotypes are "funny". As Diaz argues:

That's you reading between lines from your politically correct mind. I chose to find the funny side of things, and the image of an old lady -no matter her education and achievements- fighting 30 huge corporations makes me smile. It is funny, and the article exaggerates that. Actually, if you think about it, the only sexist and derogatory statement (against old ladies who bake cakes) is yours, who apparently think that baking cakes and just being an old woman is a bad attribute for a PhD to have.

Apparently it's not sexist because an elderly woman baking cakes is a positive stereotype, and the fact that one is involved in a technology dispute is inherently amusing. I guess I just have no sense of humor.

Tags: Gertrude Neumark Rothschild, materials science, patents, stereotypes

Female Canadian Scientists

Most of my posts have focused on science and scientists who were born or work in the U.S. I'm trying to remedy that a bit, but I'm mostly limited to sites in English. Anyone who knows of good sites about female scientists that aren't in English should feel free to leave a comment or email me (my address is in the sidebar). So, in the spirit of internationalism, this post focuses on America's neighbor to the north.

Science.ca has profiles of 50 Canadian women in science. The profiles range from pathologist Maud Abbott (1869-1940), to mathematician Cathleen Synge Morawetz, to geochemist Alice Wilson (1881-1964) to molecular biologist and current President of Princeton University Shirley Tilghman. It's a database worth perusing .

Tags: women in science, Canada