Tag Archives: wednesday geek woman

Wednesday Geek Woman: Mahananda Dasgupta, nuclear fusion researcher

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This post appeared on Lecta and Hoyden About Town for Ada Lovelace Day 2011.

Mahananda Dasgupta is a professor in the Department of Nuclear Physics at the Australian National University. Dasgupta’s research takes place at the heavy-ion accelerator facility and investigates quantum tunnelling when heavy nuclei collide. Her Pawsey Medal award in 2006 cites cutting-edge contributions includ[ing] precision measurements of unprecedented accuracy.

Dasgupta moved to Australia from India for a postdoctoral position in the 1990s, and eventually was appointed to a tenured position in 2003. She became the first woman to hold a tenured position in the Research School of Physical Sciences and Engineering at the ANU in its entire 50+ years of existence! (I was very surprised to find this, the School must be enormous in terms of academic staff, it comprises nine research departments.)

How do we retain that female workforce [in science]?

By strong and meaningful mentoring, which doesn’t just mean a quick meeting once a month or web-based mentoring, but real mentors who encourage women or younger people to devise strategies about how best to use their time, and what roles to apply for to advance their career.

Every person at that early stage needs support. We need to champion women scientifically – not “she’s a good person”, but “she’s an excellent physicist who’s done this great work”… Equally, the employers’ responsibility to provide childcare is very important… If we are expanding and building infrastructure – why are we not building childcare facilities?

I was educated in India where, if a student is sharp, they’re encouraged to show it through participating in discussions or taking on extra-educational activities… It does strike me that in Australia we give a lot of kudos to those who excel in sports, but if you excel in studies you are a dork, particularly among other students… Sometimes, following talks I give in schools, students come to the carpark to ask me science questions, rather than asking them in front of the class… How do we get away from that? I believe that to make real long-term progress we must respect and encourage intellectual achievements.

Mahananda Dasgupta, The Conversation: So seriously, why aren’t there more women in science?

Dasgupta is active both in advocating careers in science in general, volunteering herself as a science careers lecturer at schools, and in speaking on behalf of women in science. In 2004 she was the Woman in Physics Lecturer for the year, and in 2011 she represented the Group of Eight universities (the eight universities that consider themselves Australia’s best research universities) at a Women in Science and Engineering summit at Parliament House. Her 2011 Georgina Sweet Australian Laureate Fellowship from the Australian Research Council calls upon her to increase the profile of Women in Science through outreach activities, and work towards advancing early career researchers as well as facilitate leadership pathways for senior women researchers.

Recognition Dasgupta has received for her work includes:

  • the Australian Academy of Sciences’ Pawsey Medal in 2006, for outstanding work in physics by a scientist under 40
  • her election as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 2011
  • an Australian Laureate Fellowship in 2011

I can’t embed them in the post for licencing reasons, but David Hine has a couple of photos of Dasgupta with her experimental equipment: Dr Mahananda Dasgupta and Dr Mahananda Dasgupta and Dr David Hinde.

References

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Wednesday Geek Woman: Anne Street, president of the MIT alumni association

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This is a guest post by kim. This post appeared on her blog for Ada Lovelace Day 2011.

I met Anne back in the ’80s, when we both worked for an engineering firm specializing in infrastructure. She has a dazzling technical background, with multiple degrees from MIT, at a time when women MIT graduates were few and far between. Her specialty then was business development for applied engineering, and she took me under her wing as she made her rounds of the nuclear industry and associated Government and research entities.

Anne taught me a lot. There’s the obvious – how to read and answer Government requests for proposals. And there’s the not-so-obvious. How to engage engineering vision. How to distill the musings of the stratosphere-inhabiting set and transmit their thoughts to non-tech folk, without being didactic or condescending. How to be the only (or almost only) woman in a field dominated by men; taking neither nonsense nor prisoners, but doing so by subverting from within rather than wasting energy on pointless direct confrontation. How to lead the unwilling. How to build a team of people who might not be happy about putting in after hours and weekend work; shaping them so that in the end they were damned proud that their output was of the highest quality, because that way all the overtime was a badge of honor, and not wasted effort.

Through all of this ran a wicked sense of humor. She held a wake when a particularly large and desperately desired potential opportunity came in as a loss – complete with black balloons, a model coffin, and wilted flowers. The telephone play of her convincing the florist that she WANTED dead, droopy flowers was priceless. Her parties were legendary: Tinkertoys as icebreakers; mystery role playing gatherings; just the things to make totally unconnected creative folk from many walks of life unwind together, even though they had just met as strangers. I still have the glass lampwork beads and jewelry we made. Three houses and 20 years later – her daylilies still bloom in my yard. And I’m still writing engineering proposals.

But most of all Anne was always the epitome of encouragement. There was no field, no technical arena, no bit of knowledge too arcane to tunnel into and to share. She taught me to step aside and engage the brain when I read, to assess not only face value content, but possible sub rosa influences; and to always look for the proof or the root cause. And that in the end, everything can be researched because there is no priesthood. Women and men without tech degrees can through curiosity, enthusiasm and perseverance, always find meaningful and substantiated data.

Anne today is president of the MIT alumni association, where I am sure she’s using connections and influence to further the cause.

Way to go, Anne!

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Wednesday Geek Woman: Sandra K. Johnson: parallel processing expert

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This post appeared on my blog for Ada Lovelace Day 2011.

Dr. Sandra K. Johnson (also known as Sandra Johnson Baylor) got interested in electrical engineering through an invitation to go to a high school summer camp program at Southern University, a historically black university in Baton Rouge. At the time, she thought engineering was all about “driving a train” but she decided she’d go anyway and get out of town for the summer. She loved engineering camp and went back to Southern to get her bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, and ultimately went on to become the first African-American woman to get a PhD in electrical engineering in the United States.

While working as a researcher at IBM’s T. J. Watson Research Lab, Dr. Johnson worked on the prototype of the SP2 processor for IBM’s “Deep Blue” chess machine, as well as a variety of topics in the extraordinarily difficult field of highly parallel computing, including memory and IO behavior of parallel programs, cache coherence protocols, scalable shared-memory systems, and the Vesta Parallel File System. (If you’re looking for her publications, many of her papers are published under the name S. J. Baylor.) She held a number of high-ranking positions at IBM, including Linux Performance Architect, and managing the Linux Performance team.

Ironically, Dr. Johnson is currently working as an IBM business development executive in the United Arab Emirates, a relatively progressive country next door to Saudi Arabia, where she is not allowed to drive, among other highly discriminatory laws against women.Often when people claim we have already achieved legal gender equality (in their own country, of course), they forget that science, technology, and business are global activities, and career advancement often depends on working in several different countries. [Correction: The original said women weren't allowed to drive in UAE, which was me confusing Saudi Arabia with UAE.]

Sandra Johnson’s books are representative of her career: She was editor in chief of Linux Performance Tuning, author of Inspirational Nuggets, which encourages people to reach their full potential, as well as co-author with her brother of Gregory: Life of a Lupus Warrior, about her brother’s fight with lupus (Sandra was subsequently diagnosed with a non-life threatening form of lupus). Dr. Johnson is a combination of intellectual powerhouse and kind mentor. She’s on her way to the top, and she wants to bring other women (and especially women of color) along with her.

I was lucky enough to meet Dr. Johnson at the Grace Hopper women in computing conference in 2010, and I was deeply impressed. She was not only intelligent and competent, but incredibly supportive of other women. Dr. Johnson on how to become an IEEE fellow (or get any other award): It’s not magic, you have to tell your friends and mentors, “I want to be an IEEE fellow,” and then get someone to take responsibility for bugging your friends to write letters to nominate you. Don’t feel bad about asking for recognition, that’s just how it works.

Sandra Johnson is also a public speaker, with booking information on her web site. I highly recommend her as a speaker. She’s clear, informative, and inspirational in a practical and realistic way. If you get a chance to see her speak, jump at it! Personally, I hope I get to meet Dr. Johnson again.

So, next time someone says there aren’t any women in electrical engineering or processor design, you can pipe up with, “Oh, I can’t believe you haven’t heard of Dr. Sandra Johnson! She did all kinds of work on parallel processors and cache coherency for highly parallel systems and, oh yeah, the Vespa parallel file system too. She even worked on the prototype for IBM’s Deep Blue! Did you know she was also the first African-American woman to get a PhD in electrical engineering in the U.S.? Right now she’s working in the Middle East, can you believe that irony? If you ever get the chance to see her speak, take it!”

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Wednesday Geek Woman: unnamed complainant at JavaOne

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This is a guest post by Laura James, an engineer based in Cambridge UK, and the founder of Makespace, a non-profit building a community workshop where you’ll be able to build or fix almost anything. This post appeared on her blog for Ada Lovelace Day 2011.

This year, I’m going with a topical woman in technology from the lovely DevChix community. I’m not sure if she’d want to be named; but she stood up and asked for an apology after a male speaker made a sexist joke at a major tech conference (JavaOne) recently. She also made sure the organisers heard about it, and they apologised and will follow up with the speaker’s company.  But in some quarters she’s been criticised for making men in the audience uncomfortable – but she’s still an inspiration.

It’s depressing that these things are still happening (and that the joke reportedly got a good laugh). But raising awareness helps others understand that such incidents are offputting to women in technology The lovely ladies at GeekFeminism provide great resources – they too should be celebrated today.

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Wednesday Geek Woman: Zaha Hadid, acclaimed and controversial architect

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This is a guest post by Cecilia Vargas, a former software developer and educator, who wants to create a women-only physical space where women can learn about and tinker with computer stuff

Zaha Hadid stands in front of a white background with "Zaha Hadid" written on it in dark red by Paco CT CC BY-NC-SA

Zaha Hadid by Paco CT CC BY-NC-SA

Zaha Hadid is an acclaimed and controversial Iraqi-British architect. Zaha Hadid inspires me because she has thrived in a macho profession, and not only is she a woman, but is also non-Caucasian, like me. Her high-achiever father fed her single mind and strong will, and this reminds me of the encouragement I got from my Dad to go into STEM.

Hadid leads a successful London firm, and she has recently won the Royal Institute of British Architects’ Stirling Prize, for a second time. She was the first woman to win the Pritzker Prize for Architecture, the Nobel prize of architecture. The London Times describes out-of-the-box Hadid as an architect who has built a reputation for controversy.

Bergisel Schanze (ski jump), Innsbruck, Austria

Bergisel Schanze, Innsbruck, Austria, designed by Zaha Hadid

Her critics call her diva, and as reply, the T-shirts worn by Hadid staff at the opening of her first major public building, the Cincinnati Art Center, in 2003 read “Would they call me a diva if I were a guy?”

Wikipedia: Zaha Hadid
Her company: Zaha Hadid Archtects
BBC report on her most recent award: Evelyn Grace Academy wins Stirling Prize
Her bio in London’s Design Museum: Zaha Hadid
Pritzker Prize: Zaha Hadid: 2004 Laureate

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Wednesday Geek Woman: cross-post your Ada Lovelace Day post

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Happy Ada Lovelace Day!

This is a submissions thread for Wednesday Geek Woman series of profiles. This time you have two submission options:

  1. submit your Ada Lovelace Day profile for cross-posting
  2. submit in comments here as usual

Option 1a: submit your Ada Lovelace Day profile for cross-posting.

To do this, simply leave the URL of your ALD post in comments. In addition, you can optionally include:

  1. optionally, a one sentence biography about yourself, with any links you want.
  2. optionally, a note that you are willing to release your profile under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported

Notes:

  • the profile must be written by you
  • the profile will still be checked against our standard criteria before posting (see below)

Option 1b: submit your Ada Lovelace Day profile for a round-up

This mostly applies to anyone who wrote about a woman we’ve already featured. We won’t cross-post your posts, but we’d love to stick them in a roundup.

Option 2: submit in comments here.

Submit your profile of a geek woman in (hidden) comments here and selected ones will be posted (perhaps lightly edited). Here’s what to include:

  1. Optional: a quick one sentence bio paragraph about yourself, with any links you want. For example: Mary is a humble geek blogger and you can find her at <a href=”http://geekfeminism.org/”>geekfeminism.org</a>Notes:
    • if this bio line is missing, you will be assumed to want to be anonymous. This applies even if you put a name and URL in the comment field.
    • don’t feel pressured into revealing things about yourself you don’t want to. A pseudonymous, mysterious, vague or simple bio is fine.
  2. Compulsory: two or more parapraphs describing your geek woman, ideally including why you admire her in particular.
  3. Optional: links to her biography, her Wikipedia page, and so on.
  4. Optional: agreement that your post can be used under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (posts that have this can be used in the Geek Feminism wiki).

See previous posts for examples.

Here’s a form you could copy and paste into comments:

My bio (one sentence only, optional):

Name or pseudonym of the geek woman I am submitting:

A few words summarising the woman’s geek accomplishments (for example “AI researcher” or “discoverer of supernova” or “engine mechanic”):

My post about this woman (two or more paragraphs):

Links to this woman elsewhere (optional):

[Please delete this line if you don't agree!] I agree to licence my post under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported.

Criteria. Continue reading →

Wednesday Geek Woman: Denise Paolucci, founder of Dreamwidth

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This is a guest post by Elizabeth. Elizabeth is a multivariate geek who blogs at elliemurasaki@dreamwidth and who also posts to Affairs Magazine and The Slacktiverse.

Submissions are currently open for Wednesday Geek Woman posts.

Dreamwidth "swirly d" logo

Denise, in collaboration with Mark Smith (at first) and a plethora of mostly-female coders, launched Dreamwidth in 2009. Dreamwidth is a social journaling platform and a code fork of LiveJournal; differences between the services are listed here. The service is committed to accessibility, to diversity, and to being open-source and ad-free.

Photo of Denise Paolucci, facing away from camera

Denise is also an author, published under ‘Denise McCune’ in the Finding the Way and Changing the World collections of Valdemar stories, and an artisan, whose jewelry and stitch markers can be found at the Faultless Pajama Foundry on Etsy.

Dreamwidth: Denise’s official blog

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Wednesday Geek Woman: Jill Bolte Taylor, brain scientist and stroke survivor

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This is a guest post by Kelly Seiler. Kelly blogs at Undercover Feminist. She is an electrical engineer working on the avionics for an unmanned airplane.

Submissions are currently open for Wednesday Geek Woman posts.

I first heard of Jill Bolte Taylor as a result of watching the free entertainment (which happened to be TED talks) on a Virgin Flight. I was rivited by her story. She recounts her experiences including the moment where she realizes she was having a stroke (10:35 mark):

“Oh my gosh! I’m having a stroke! I’m having a stroke! Wow! This is so cool. This is so cool. How many brain scientists have the opportunity to study their own brain from the inside out? But, I’m a very busy woman! I don’t have time for a stroke!”

Photograph of Jill Bolte Taylor giving her TED talk

Jill Bolte Taylor's TED talk, by Steve Jurvetson

Jill is an inspiration to me in so many ways. While still recovering her memories she taught a highly technical class. She stayed just ahead of the students in learning the material. Amazing!

If you haven’t heard of Jill, check out her TED talk where she recounts the morning of the stroke and it’s aftermath. She also spreads a wonderful message of letting go and living in the moment… she asks that we “Step to the Right” of our left hemisphere brain chatter – a reference to the profound peace and nirvana she experienced as she lost the function of the left half of her brain.

Her TED Talk: My Stroke of Insight
On the web: My Stroke of Insight
For an in depth look at Jill’s story check out her book: My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey

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Wednesday Geek Woman: Maud Menten, medical researcher

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This is a guest post by Ingrid. Ingrid looks at the entire world from an evolutionary perspective and sometimes remembers to post stuff to Dreamwidth.

Submissions are currently open for Wednesday Geek Woman posts.

Photograph of Maud MentenMaud Menten was one of the first Canadian women to receive a medical doctorate, in 1911. Women could not do research in Canada in those days, so she sailed alone across the Atlantic to work at Leonor Michaelis’ lab in Berlin. During her year there, they developed the first model and equation to describe enzyme kinetics, the Michaelis-Menten equation. She worked for many years as a teacher and researcher at Pittsburg, making more important discoveries – she was the first to separate proteins by electrophoresis, and altogether, could lay claim to being the mother of biochemistry.

She was hard-working, determined and persistent, despite lack of recognition – her contributions to medical science exceed that of many Nobel laureates, and she was only made full professor a year before she retired. She also studied languages, music and painting, and did mountaineering. Today, she is surprisingly unknown, even by biochemists (I learnt the Michaelis-Menten equation early in my undergraduate biochemistry courses but only found out that Menten was a women significantly later), and I’d like to rectify that a bit.

Wikipedia: Maud Menten
Rebecca Skloot (2000) Some called her Miss Menten
Canadian Medical Hall of Fame: Dr. Maud Menten (includes 4min YouTube documentary)

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Wednesday Geek Woman: Branca Edmée Marques, Portuguese scientist, and collaborator with Marie Curie

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This is a guest post by Jennifer. Jennifer is a feminist and actuary who is travelling the world with her family and profiling notable women of history on her blog.

This entry is cross-posted from Jennifer’s blog.

Submissions are currently open for Wednesday Geek Woman posts.

Photograph of Branca Edmée MarquesBranca Edmée Marques was a Portuguese scientist, who studied and worked with Marie Curie. She was born in Lisbon in 1899, and studied chemistry at the University of Lisbon. In 1925 after completing her degree, she was invited to be an Assistant by the Chemistry Professor. He was concerned about whether she would maintain discipline in her classes, being female, but she must have succeeded as in 1930 she was awarded a scholarship to study with Marie Curie at the Sorbonne, in Paris.

Marie Curie was by then very famous, having won two Nobel Prizes. Curie liked her work so much that she gave her one of her most interesting research projects to do, and wrote a letter to the Portuguese government asking them to renew her research grant.

Unfortunately the combination of Marques being a woman, and the Portuguese government being in a state of flux (transforming from military to civilian dictatorship) meant that her grant wasn’t renewed. Curie managed to finagle a continuing scholarship for her anyway, and her doctorate on “new research on the fragmentation of barium salts” was awarded with the highest possible rating of tres honorable. In 1936, the Portuguese Universities recognized the degree, and awarded her an equivalent doctorate.

On returning home, however, she was unable to get an appropriate post at University. This, from all my sources, does appear to be fairly simple sexism, even if the lack of financial support in France might not have been. Instead, she lectured and started up the Laboratory of Radiochemistry and only in 1942 was she awarded the title of First Assistant, which meant that the University was recognizing her contribution more significantly.

Photograph of Branca Edmée Marques
She continued to lecture and work towards building up a new department, which eventually became the Department of Radiochemistry and Nuclear Chemistry. She published regularly throughout her professional life, researching many aspects of peaceful application of nuclear technology. In 1966, her contributions were finally recognized with a full professorship at the University of Lisbon.

She died in 1986, at the age of 87.

This post is based on Portuguese language sources (linked below) so anyone who can read the original Portuguese, please feel free to comment if my interpretations were wrong!

Marcas das ciências e das técnicas: Professora Branca Edmée Marques
A ciência em Portugal: Branca Edmée Marques
Maxima: Sancha Sanches