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Dear Colleagues,
I am pleased to include another issue of RFS Briefings with some timely and encouraging updates on women in science.
An important birthday to remember…
On July 25, 1920, X-ray crystallographer Rosalind Elsie Franklin was born in London. Her untimely death on April 16, 1958 at age 37 was surely a tragedy for science, and humanity. Franklin’s work was critical in the discovery of DNA and RNA. She never received the recognition she deserved and died of ovarian cancer four years before the Nobel Prize was awarded to Watson and Crick. They unfortunately did not give her the credit we now know was hers. Read more.
Please continue to share important news and opportunities with us so that we may share it with you and others who are committed to supporting the careers of exceptional women in science.
Stay safe and sound,
Rosalind Franklin Society Awards Recognize Outstanding Contributions from Women and Minorities.
The 2022 Rosalind Franklin Society (RFS) Awards in Science, recognizing outstanding peer-reviewed research by women and underrepresented minorities in STEM, have been announced. The anthology of award winners is available digitally on the Rosalind Franklin Society website as well as in print. The book is a remarkable compendium of research in science, engineering, and medicine that has been accomplished by outstanding investigators. Read more.
The Genome Writers Guild (GWG) and Rosalind Franklin Society have joined forces again.
The Genome Writers Guild (GWG) and Rosalind Franklin Society have joined forces again to recognize amazing scientists by awarding the Rosalind Franklin Medal. This is our annual award to women working in the fields of genome engineering and synthetic biology and researchers in the early stage of their careers.
Congratulations to the RFS Medal Winner, Grace McAuley, and the finalists Dr. Mandana Arbab and Dr. Katie Galloway.
Evelyn M. Witkin, Who Discovered How DNA Repairs Itself, Dies at 102.
in a career that began at the dawn of modern genetic research in the late 1940s, Dr. Witkin explored the ways in which radiation both damaged DNA and generated a repair mechanism, what she came to call the SOS response. Her research shed new light on how solar radiation and chemicals in the environment impact our genetic makeup. Read more.
How centuries of sexism excluded women from science — and how to redress the balance.
Not Just for the Boys is an enjoyable and useful primer on the challenges faced by women in STEM. Athene Donald, an experimental physicist at the University of Cambridge, UK, and a leading authority on gender-equity issues, draws evidence from history, neuroscience and social science to explain why gender bias is rife in STEM. Read more.
NASA chief Kate Calvin discusses how climate change is affecting everyday life.
Kate Calvin, NASA chief scientist and climate adviser, breaks down on "Face the Nation" how climate change is driving some of the most recent weather and health events. Read more. Image: NASA/Bill Ingalls.
Female physicists aren’t represented in the media – and this lack of representation hurts the physics field.
As a physics professor who studies ways to support women in STEM fields and a film studies professor who worked as a screenwriter in Hollywood, Chandralekha Singh and Carl Kurlander believe the movie Oppenheimer’s depiction of women reinforces stereotypes about who can succeed in science. It also represents a larger trend of women’s contributions in science going unrecognized in modern media. Read more.
Science’s gender gap: the shocking data that reveal its true extent.
Until the 2000s, women were under-represented, but in the past 20 years, women have been advantaged relative to similarly credentialed men in psychology, economics and mathematics. Equity for Women in Science is a convincing reply to those who advance such arguments. Less overt — all but invisible — gender gaps are still with us. Read more.
An Astrobiologist’s Search for Life in Space—and Meaning on Earth.
Aomawa Shields, an astrobiologist at UC Irvine, studies distant worlds using computer models to evaluate their climates and assess whether they might be friendly to alien life. In her new book out, Life on Other Planets, she discusses her scientific work, as well as her own experiences as one of the few Black women in physics and astronomy and as a classically trained actor who completed her master of fine arts degree at UCLA. Read more. Image: NASA.
IGI’s Women in Enterprising Science Program Welcomes Four New Fellows.
The Innovative Genomics Institute (IGI) welcomed a new cohort of Fellows for the HS Chau Women in Enterprising Science Program (WIES), a unique program designed to promote gender equity in bio-entrepreneurship.The Fellows will be provided with up to $150,000 in support for the first year to develop their research into an early-stage entrepreneurial concept. Read more.
Keystone Symposia celebrates their 50th anniversary.
Join Keystone Symposia (a member of the Rosalind Franklin Society, Council of Academic Institutions) for their Upcoming Conferences in the Field of Cardiovascular Biology. Under the leadership of CEO Dr. Deborah Johnson, these symposia are true game-changers! Read more.
Cutting the gender employment gap in half could boost global GDP by 6%.
Fifteen years after producing a key report on women in the global workforce, Goldman Sachs Research finds there’s been progress since then in women’s education and participation in the job market. But even so, gender gaps in pay and employment are still persistent. Read more.
The CDC is in crisis — can its new leader save it?
Mandy Cohen, a physician who served as North Carolina’s health secretary until the end of 2021, started her tenure as CDC director. Cohen takes over the role previously filled by Rochelle Walensky, an infectious-disease specialist who left the CDC less than a year after announcing an initiative to overhaul the agency’s structure and operations. Read more. Image: North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), UNC Public Health.
How To Address Women Facing Ageism At Each And Every Stage Of Their Career.
The benefit of a multi-generational workforce means that we can utilize and learn from different perspectives. One isn’t better than the other, but together, give us unique insights in how best to create technologies and solutions for society - an incredibly diverse group. Read more.
Meet the 2023 Winners of the McNulty Prize.
The McNulty Foundation and the Aspen Institute announced the three winners of the 2023 John P. McNulty Prize, each of whom will receive $150,000 towards their organization. Their transformative social ventures address three of the most important issues of this generation, from revolutionizing mental healthcare, to addressing the global plastic crisis, to restoring the promise of economic mobility. Read more.
Meet DRDRI’s new director.
Dominique Pichard has been selected as NCATS’ Director of the Division of Rare Diseases Research Innovation (DRDRI). She will guide and coordinate collaborative research and patient engagement efforts to speed rare disease diagnosis, treatment, and care. Her research has focused on identifying new treatments and improving clinical trial design for rare diseases. Since 2019, she has served as the Chief Science Officer at the International Rett Syndrome Foundation. She will officially join the team on September 11. Read more. Image: The International Rett Syndrome Foundation.
Sitting Down With… Theresa Heah, CEO, Intergalactic Therapeutics, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Theresa Heah, CEO of Intergalactic Therapeutics, is leading a team working tirelessly to advance safer, more effective, more versatile, and more accessible solutions to address ophthalmological disorders and beyond. Read more.
What the Film Oppenheimer Probably Will Not Talk About: The Lost Women of the Manhattan Project.
Hundreds of the scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project were women. They were physicists, chemists, engineers and mathematicians. The Lost Women of Science initiative brings you the story of one of them. Read more.
Attention all allies: why there are so few women in science and how you can help.
Despite years of campaigning, women are still wildly under-represented in science. According to UNESCO, only one third of scientific researchers are female. In physics, the imbalance is even starker, with women making up under a quarter of undergraduate physicists in the UK and only 10% of physics professors. Read more.
Applications Open for the 2023 IAEA Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship Programme.
Named after the pioneering physicist and twice Nobel Prize laureate, Marie Sklodowska-Curie, the MSCFP encourages women to enter and pursue careers in the nuclear field by providing scholarships for tuition and living costs along with internship opportunities. Read more.
New Voices in Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.
The application for the next cohort of New Voices members is now open! This is a cohort-based leadership program that promotes collaboration among outstanding early- and mid-career scientists, engineers, and medical professionals. Read more.
Eunice Newton Foote's 204th Birthday.
This slideshow Doodle celebrates the 204th birthday of American scientist and women’s rights activist Eunice Newton Foote. Foote was the first person to discover the greenhouse effect and its role in the warming of Earth’s climate. Read more.
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