“More than 150 people gathered at the MIT Media Lab this weekend with a single goal: ‘Make the breast pump not suck!’” writes Nidhi Subbaraman for BetaBoston. “Over two days, teams brainstormed and then built prototype designs for the machine that moms almost universally love to loathe.”
Deborah Kotz writes for The Boston Globe about the breast pump hackathon held at the MIT Media Lab over the weekend: “First-prize, $3000 and a trip to Silicon Valley to pitch investors, went to the team that devised the Mighty Mom Utility Belt, a hands-free wearable pump that can be worn under clothes.”
Katie Levingston writes for Boston.com about the “Mighty Mom” system which took the first place prize in the Breast Pump Hackathon held at the MIT Media Lab. “[T]he ‘Mighty Mom’ is a discrete, wearable and smart utility belt for breast pumping,” writes Levingston.
Susan Rohwer writes for The Los Angeles Times about the “Bringing Innovation to Maternal Health: Make the Breast Pump Not Suck!” hackathon at the MIT Media Lab: “[A] civic-minded group of designers, engineers and parents will gather at MIT to try to rethink and redesign the breast pump.”
Researchers from MIT, Carnegie Mellon, and Union College found that collaborative groups containing more women showed higher collective intelligence, writes Geoff Colvin for Fortune. The findings indicate that because on average women score higher on social sensitivity, the greater proportion of women in a group, the better.
Jena McGregor reports for The Washington Post on a paper coauthored by MIT graduate student Jason Sheltzer that indicates that women are under represented in life sciences laboratories run by elite male scientists. The numbers were significantly less than those in labs headed by females.
In a piece for Slate, Jane Hu examines a new study that finds that elite male faculty members in the life sciences tend to hire fewer women than their female counterparts. “Fifty-two percent of biology Ph.D.s are women, but their representation shrinks to 39 percent at the postdoc level, and only 18 percent at the tenured professor level,” Hu reports.
Nature reporter Elizabeth Gibney examines a new study that highlights gender bias in elite research labs. “We do think that maybe this shows the need for elite faculty members to make a stronger, more proactive effort to reach out to talented women,” says graduate student Jason Sheltzer.
“The study suggests that when female trainees are shut out of the top labs, they don’t get access to the resources, networking, and other opportunities that are critical to advancing their careers in academic science,” The Chronicle of Higher Education writes of a new study on gender bias in elite research labs.
“Of particular concern, men who have achieved elite status by virtue of awards they have won -- in other words, the men whose labs may be the best launching pads for careers -- are the least likely to hire women who are grad students and postdocs,” writes Scott Jaschik of Inside Higher Ed.
Carolyn Johnson writes for The Boston Globe about research by graduate student Jason Sheltzer that indicates that male professors are less likely to employ females at top U.S. research institutions. “[M]ale professors employed 11 percent fewer female graduate students and 22 percent fewer female postdoctoral researchers than do women professors," writes Johnson.
“Economist David Autor of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that the median woman with a college degree earned about $23,000 more a year than a woman who terminated her education once she earned her high school diploma,” writes Washington Post reporter Joann Weiner.
“A series of three studies reveals that investors prefer pitches from male entrepreneurs over those from female entrepreneurs, even when the content of the pitches is identical,” writes Carmen Nobel of Forbes on the findings of a new paper co-authored by Professor Fiona Murray.
NPR’s All Tech Considered looks at new research from MIT Professor Fiona Murray that indicates attractive males are more likely to receive funding for their startups than females.
Institute Prof. Sheila Widnall, the first woman to lead the Air Force, and Linguistics alumna Jessie “Little Doe” Baird, an indigenous language preservationist, are two of the 10 accomplished women chosen to represent Massachusetts in USA Today’s Women of the Century series, reports Nicole Simmons. Baird was also included in the paper’s nationwide list of 100 Women of the Century.