Padma Lalshmi, host of Bravo’s Top Chef, delivered remarks at MIT’s fourth annual Open Endoscopy Forum. Ahead of her speech, Lakshmi spent the day at MIT touring labs and engaging with students, reports Olivia Vanni for The Boston Herald.
Top Chef host Padma Lakshmi spoke at MIT’s Open Endoscopy Forum, where she discussed her past experience with sexual assault and her personal fight with endometriosis. Lakshmi “has been a longtime advocate of raising awareness for endometriosis since being diagnosed as a teen,” write Megan Johnson and Joelle Goldstein for People.
Amy Fitzgerald, outreach program coordinator for the Edgerton Center, speaks with New York Times reporter Jane Levere about the Ad Council’s new “She Can STEM” campaign aimed at girls ages 11 to 15. Fitzgerald says the message “could have a big effect,” adding that it’s vital the campaign shows “mechanical engineers, aviation engineers, women who get their hands dirty…Girls, especially, do not have an idea of the range of possibilities.”
Fox News reporters Kevin Tracy and Christopher Howard highlight how MIT alumna Laila Shabir created a summer camp aimed at inspiring girls interesting in playing and creating video games. “It’s like teaching someone how to paint,” Shabir explains. “You know once you teach them how to paint they can express themselves through that medium. That’s exactly what we’re doing at camp.”
BuzzFeed highlights the work of Prof. Sangeeta Bhatia in a list of trailblazing women working in the STEM fields. BuzzFeed notes that Bhatia is an “incredible role model for women in STEM, not only for to her scientific contributions, but for the elegant way in which she balances her professional and personal roles.”
Glendale News-Press reporter Andrew Campa highlights Leanorine Lorenzana - a rising high school senior in Glendale, California – and her experience with the MIT Women’s Technology Program. Lorenzana noted that she loved how at MIT, “it’s a culture where anything nerdy wasn’t seen with a negative connotation. Everyone is nerdy, and everyone is talking about different things all the time.”
Lisa Spear of Newsweek reports that MIT researchers have found marketing algorithms do not show STEM job ads to women because reaching them through advertising is more expensive. “This means that fewer women are seeing the advertising for science related jobs, even though it’s illegal to target jobs to one gender,” explains Spear.
A study by Prof. Catherine Tucker finds that marketing algorithms prevent many women from seeing STEM career ads, reports Dina Fine Maron for Scientific American. Tucker explains that the, “economics driving the phenomenon are global—female eyeballs are more expensive and a cost-minimizing algorithm will choose not to show ads to them.”
MIT alumna and visiting professor Mary Brown Parlee, who was known for publishing “groundbreaking research pushing back against the rise of the catch-all diagnosis premenstrual syndrome,” has died at age 75, reports J.M. Lawrence for The Boston Globe.
CNBC reporter Courtney Connley spotlights Mareena Robinson Snowden, the first black woman to earn a PhD in nuclear engineering from MIT. Snowden’s advisor, Senior Research Scientist Richard Lanza, says that, “Mareena has that rare combination of passion, enthusiasm and technical and policy expertise."
MIT alumna Stephanie Lampkin has been named to Fortune’s 40 Under 40 List. As the founder and CEO of Blendoor, Lampkin “is determined to mitigate systemic bias in tech and beyond,” writes Ellen McGirt for Fortune.
The BBC’s Jane Wakefield attends a breast pump hackathon at MIT, where she meets with “a group of women determined to improve this old-fashioned tech.” MIT research affiliate Catherine D’Ignazio highlights matters like comfort, discretion and milk tracking capabilities as the type of issues the hackathon looks to solve.
Prof. Cynthia Breazeal helped Mattel design the latest Barbie in its “Career of the Year” line, who is a robotics engineer. In collaboration with the online platform Tynker, the company is also offering “seven free "Barbie-inspired” coding lessons that will focus on logic, problem-solving, and other skills that a potential robotics engineer will need,” writes Melissa Locker for Time.
Institute Prof. Sheila Widnall co-chaired a new report from the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, which examines the prevalence of sexual harassment in higher ed. The authors “call for a ‘systemwide change to the culture and climate in higher education’ in order to address the issue and prevent harassment,” report Ellie Kaufman and Evan Simko-Bednarski for CNN.
Yahoo! reporter Elise Solé highlights how Alejandra Falla successfully completed her PhD studies at MIT while pregnant with her daughter, Clara. Clara sported a miniature MIT regalia to Commencement. “It started as a joke but we decided that Clara had earned her Ph.D. in the womb,” says Falla. “She deserved to graduate with me.”