Women in STEM

Prof. Emerita Evelyn Fox Keller, who was known for her work as a “theoretical physicist, a mathematical biologist and, beginning in the late 1970s, a feminist theorist who explored the way gender pervades and distorts scientific inquiry,” has died, reports Clay Risen for The New York Times. “Keller trained as a physicist and focused much of her early work on applying mathematical concepts to biology,” writes Risen. “But as the feminist movement took hold, she began to think critically about how ideas of masculinity and femininity had affected her profession.”

WBZ News Radio’s Emma Friedman spotlights the #IfThenSheCan Exhibit at this year’s Cambridge Science Festival, which features 30, 3-D printed orange statues of women innovators in science, technology, engineering and math, six of whom are MIT affiliates.

President Sally Kornbluth joined The Boston Globe’s Shirley Leung on her Say More podcast to discuss the future of AI, ethics in science, and climate change. “I view [the climate crisis] as an existential issue to the extent that if we don’t take action there, all of the many, many other things that we’re working on, not that they’ll be irrelevant, but they’ll pale in comparison,” Kornbluth says.

Darby Dunn ’08 speaks with CNBC reporter Catherine Clifford about her journey from building rockets for SpaceX to working on making fusion energy a reality at Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS). “For me, it really came down to wanting to use my energy to clean up the planet instead of get off it,” says Dunn. “So that was the huge shift for me to come to CFS.” 

Knight Science Journalism Director Deborah Blum writes for The New York Times about Melissa L. Sevigny’s new book “Brave The Wild River: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon.” Blum writes: “Unlike those old-time newspaper reporters, Sevigny does not look at her subjects and see women out of place. She sees women doing their job and doing it well.”

Virginia Norwood ’47, an aerospace pioneer who designed and championed the scanner used to map and study the earth from space, has died at 96, reports Dylan Loeb McClain for The New York Times. Using her invention, the Landsat Satellite program has been able to capture images of the planet that provide “powerful visual evidence of climate change, deforestation and other shifts affecting the planet’s well-being,” writes McClain.

Prof. Danielle Wood speaks with NPR Shortwave co-host Aaron Scott about the future of space sustainability. “I hope that humans pause and note that the actions we're taking now and in the next 10 years really are going to be decisive in the relationship between humans and our planet, and humans and other locations, like the Moon,” says Wood.

“The Sun Queen,” a new documentary on PBS, will highlight the life of the late former MIT Prof. Mária Telkes and her work in developing solar energy. Telkes is known for her “work on the 1948 Dover Sun House, a solar-heated model home created by an all-female team,” reports Erin Blakemore for The Washington Post.

NPR reporter Kaitlyn Radde spotlights the life and work of Virginia Norwood ’47, “a founding figure in satellite land imaging who developed technology to scan the surface of the moon for safe landing sites and map our planet from space.” Norwood was known as the "Mother of Landsat” for her work developing the Multispectral Scanner System that flew on the first Landsat satellite.

Virginia Norwood ’47, “a pioneering aerospace engineer who used design innovations, emerging technologies and seasoned intuition in projects that scanned the lunar surface for safe Apollo landing sites and mapped the Earth from space with digital imagery never before seen,” has died at 96, reports Brian Murphy for The Washington Post. “Over a four-decade career that began with slide rules and moved into the age of computer modeling, Ms. Norwood became known as a resourceful problem solver who often hit upon simple but effective solutions,” Murphy writes.

Prof. Emeritus Marcia Bartusiak speaks with GBH co-hosts Paris Alston and Jeremy Siegel about her four decades of experience as a science communicator covering the fields of astronomy and physics. “That’s the role of a science writer, is to take those, what seemed to be difficult ideas and, through metaphors and analogies, show how it affects your everyday life, or explain them with examples that they would be familiar with from their everyday life,” says Bartusiak.

President Sally Kornbluth discusses the importance of seeing more women in leadership positions, noting that universities that tap into the full range of human potential are the ones most likely to elevate the most important questions, and to bring the best minds and talents to answering them. Kornbluth notes that having more women in leadership is “exciting, both for the talent and perspective they bring, and because, as role models, they can help broaden the pool of who can imagine themselves in our classrooms and in our laboratories." 

Nature highlights the Rising Stars program at MIT, which “offers mentoring and support for researchers from historically marginalized or under-represented groups, as they move through their careers.” Nature notes that the program stems from Prof. Emerita Nancy Hopkins’ advocacy for gender equality in academic.

Lucy Jones PhD ’81 speaks with CBS reporter Danya Bacchus about her career in seismology, how she helped transform earthquake policy and her work creating the Great ShakeOut, drills aimed at helping people prepare for earthquakes. “I want to be remembered as a scientist, rather than just a communicator,” says Jones, “but a scientist who cared about the science getting used.”

Prof. Ritu Raman speaks with Scientific American about her work “building machines that we call bio-hybrid because they're part biological and part made out of synthetic materials. The biological robots that we're building are powered by muscle tissue so that every time the muscle contracts, you could get something that looks like movement.”