Prof. Harvey Lodish and Prof. Emeritus Nancy Hopkins explain in The Boston Globe that the lack of women in the biotech industry stems from the exclusion of women at the venture capital firms that fund those companies. “Including more women in the pool of venture and biotech leaders will insure the success of the Massachusetts biopharmaceutical ecosystem,” Profs. Lodish and Hopkins conclude.
In an article about the increasing number of women studying electrical engineering and computer science at some of the nation’s leading universities, Washington Post reporter Nick Anderson highlights how “more than half of engineering bachelor’s degrees at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology went to women in 2015.”
MIT alumna Danielle Appleton writes for TIME that in order to encourage females to pursue careers in STEM fields, women must mentor other women. “The path to changing female representation is very much about being a physical presence in the STEM world. We need to show young women that we exist, that we are here for support and that they are of value."
A new study co-authored by MIT Prof. Susan Silbey examines why female students leave the field of engineering. When the researchers analyzed "more than 40 engineering students’ twice-monthly diaries, they found that female students often felt marginalized during group activities,” Inside Higher Ed reports.
Alumna Noramay Cadena writes for WBUR about encouraging Latinas to pursue STEM careers, sharing how an MIT student inspired her. “Here was a successful person who looked like me, who sounded like me, and who truly understood my life experience, telling me I had what it took to go to MIT.”
Molly Reynolds writes for The Huffington Post about an MIT study that found the most successful teams contain a higher percentage of women. “Extremely interesting was the successful teams' ability to detect the emotion of their teammates' written words when they worked online.”
CSAIL PhD students Elena Glassman, Neha Narula and Jean Yang write for Wired about their recent Reddit Ask Me Anything session and gender disparities in STEM. “By raising awareness and generating discussion, we hope to help women and other minorities feel more supported pursuing careers in STEM,” write Glassman, Narula and Yang.
Ian King of Bloomberg Businessweek profiles MIT alumna Lisa Su, the first female CEO of Advanced Micro Devices. Su elected to attend MIT for her doctorate, master’s and bachelor’s degrees as “it was the most difficult challenge she could find” and went on to work for “most of the biggest names in the U.S. semiconductor business,” writes King.
Katie Walmsley reports for CNN Money on SHINE, a program founded by MIT graduate Kirin Sinha that teaches math to young girls through dance. "We saw an almost 300% improvement in their math scores, we saw over 100% improvement in confidence," says Sinha.
Melissa Lott of Scientific American reports on the third annual Clean Energy Education & Empowerment (C3E) women’s initiative symposium co-hosted by the MIT Energy Initiative. The group works in partnership with governments around the world to increase the participation of women in the energy field.
Writing for Slate, Elizabeth Weingarten looks at closing the gender gap in the STEM fields. As part of her reporting, Weingarten highlights the study Professor Nancy Hopkins led into gender biases at MIT, and how that evaluation made it easier for women to pursue a career at MIT while also raising children.
Irene Greif talks to The Atlantic’s Rebecca Rosen about being the first woman to receive her Ph.D. in computer science from MIT, her decision to pursue a career as a researcher and her efforts to pioneer the field of computer-supported cooperative work.
The Atlantic’s Rebecca Rosen profiles MIT alumna Radia Perlman in the first installment of a new series on pioneering women in science and technology. Rosen discusses Perlman’s early interest in science, her first introduction to programming and her time at MIT.