Women In Astronomy: AASWomen Newsletter for December 20, 2019

AAS Committee on the Status of Women AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of December 20, 2019
eds: JoEllen McBride, Nicolle Zellner, Heather Flewelling, Maria Patterson, and Alessandra Aloisi

Mileva Maric-Einstein, from item 2

This week's issues:

1. Meet Your CSWA, Kathleen Eckert

2. Casualty Of Genius: The Sacrifice Of Mileva Maric-Einstein

3. Nature's 10: Ten people who mattered in science in 2019

4. What Works to Close Gender Gaps?

5. Full Spectrum Documentary Short Film

6. Bringing community astronomy to rural Africa

7. Male Researchers More Apt Than Women to Hype Findings: Study

8. US biomedical agency has investigated hundreds claims of inappropriate conduct this year

9. There's No Winter Break From 'Publish or Perish'

10. Become a reviewer for the National Fellowship Program: Information for new reviewers

11. Biennial European Astrobiology Conference (BEACON)

12. Applied Galactic Dynamics Summer School

13. Global gender equality will take another 100 years to achieve, study finds

14. First-Year Graduate Students in Physics and Astronomy: Characteristics and Background

15. 'Miss America can be a scientist': Camille Schrier of Virginia wins after onstage chemistry experiment

16. Women Representation on Company Boards Increased From 5% In 2012 To 13% In 2018

17. Grading for STEM Equity

18. Job Opportunities

19. How to Submit to the AASWomen Newsletter

20. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWomen Newsletter

21. Access to Past Issues of the AASWomen Newsletter

1. Meet Your CSWA, Kathleen Eckert
From: Regina Jorgenson via womeninastronomy.blogspot.com

Kathleen Eckert is a postdoc at the University of Pennsylvania working on galaxy shape measurement algorithms for large imaging surveys to better understand our universe. She received her PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a goal of understanding the masses of galaxies in terms of their stars, gas, and dark matter for the RESOLVE survey. She currently lives in Richmond, VA (working remotely) with her husband, twin toddler girls, and a toddler-wary cat.

2. Casualty Of Genius: The Sacrifice Of Mileva Maric-Einstein
From: JoEllen McBride [joellen.mcbride_at_gmail.com]

By Dale Debakcsy

"In 1948, a frail and care-worn woman died in a Swiss hospital after a complete mental breakdown. It was the best thing that had happened to her in four long, impossibly wearisome decades that seemed to revel in inventing new hardships for a single destitute woman to bear. Her name was Mileva Maric (1875 - 1948), once Mileva Einstein, and there was a time, long ago, when she was the mathematical heart of a startling revolution in physics."

3. Nature's 10: Ten people who mattered in science in 2019
From: Nicolle Zellner [nzeller_at_albion.edu]

Dr. Victoria Kaspi, McGill University, has been named one of Nature magazine's "Ten people who mattered in science in 2019". She and her colleagues built the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME), which became the world’s best hunter of fast radio bursts. CHIME has spotted hundreds of bursts, leading all other telescope observations and providing data to help astronomers solve the puzzle of where these signals originate.

Read more about Dr. Kaspi and the other nine scientists at

https://www.nature.com/immersive/d41586-019-03749-0/index.html

4. What Works to Close Gender Gaps?
From: Andrea Dupree [adupree_at_cfa.harvard.edu]

The Harvard Kennedy School has a Women and Public Policy Program (WAPPP) and they have just established a new website, What Works to Close Gender Gaps? WAPPP’s Gender Action Portal (GAP) is a collection of summarized research evaluating the impact of specific policies, strategies, and organizational practices to close gender gaps in the areas of economic opportunity, politics, health, and education. GAP focuses on experimental approaches to evaluate policies - both in the field and in the laboratory - and draws from multiple disciplines, including economics, psychology, and organizational behavior. GAP serves as an online tool for decision makers across sectors to utilize evidence-based research in order to create better informed policies and procedures. This site contains searchable subjects and copies of hundreds of studies aiming to close the gender gap with evidence-based research.

https://gap.hks.harvard.edu

5. Full Spectrum Documentary Short Film
From: Bryan Mendez [bmendez_at_ssl.berkeley.edu]

I've been conducting interviews with colleagues in space science from underrepresented groups for a few years, as part of a NASA-funded effort. I'm so happy to share with you this 20 min short film that I made from those interviews: Full Spectrum. The popular image of a scientist is an older white man wearing a white lab coat holding a flask of bubbling colored liquids. The reality in the space sciences is that about 80% of faculty are indeed white men. Meet some space scientists who are changing the social image of who does science. Learn some of their perspectives on the challenges of diversity in the physical sciences.

http://multiverse.ssl.berkeley.edu/FullSpectrum

6. Bringing community astronomy to rural Africa
From: JoEllen McBride [joellen.mcbride_at_gmail.com]

By EarthSky Voices

"The importance of working in harmony with indigenous cultural knowledge was also the message of Nurul Fatini Jaafar, an ethno-astronomy researcher at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur. She works with the Semelai people of Lake Bera, in the center of the Malaysian peninsula."

7. Male Researchers More Apt Than Women to Hype Findings: Study
From: JoEllen McBride [joellen.mcbride_at_gmail.com]

By Robert Preidt

"Male researchers are far more likely than female colleagues to claim that their findings are especially important, a new study says.

The language used to describe discoveries can affect how much attention researchers get and also affect their career advancement. These findings may help explain why women in medicine and science tend to get paid less and have fewer career opportunities, the authors said."

8. US biomedical agency has investigated hundreds claims of inappropriate conduct this year
From: Nicolle Zellner [nzellner_at_albion.edu]

by Nidhi Subbaraman

Nearly 40% of women trainees polled by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) between January and March 2019 reported being sexually harassed at work.

Those are the results of a staff survey delivered to NIH director Francis Collins and a panel of his advisers on 12 December. It identified young women, people from sexual and gender minorities and those with disabilities as those most vulnerable to harassment.

The elite panel also reviewed a long-awaited report commissioned by the NIH that charged the agency to work rapidly stop sexual harassment in science labs. But agency watchers who have pressed the NIH to act for more than a year were left without a clear timeline for changes.

9. There's No Winter Break From 'Publish or Perish'
From: Nicolle Zellner [nzellner_at_albion.edu]

In a study of almost 50,000 manuscript submissions and more than 75,000 peer-review submissions to BMJ and its sister journal, BMJ Open, investigators, including one at the BMJ (formerly known as the British Medical Journal), found that manuscript or peer review submissions were just as likely to occur on weekdays, weekends and/or holidays. In fact, the probability of submitting on the weekend was slightly higher. Big difference by country were noted, however."[R]esearchers in China lead the world in working on weekends, where more than a fifth of academics submitted papers and peer-review reports, followed by those based in Japan, Italy and Spain. More than a tenth of researchers in the United States turned in studies on weekends, and more than 15 percent conducted peer review."

Read the original study at

https://www.bmj.com/content/367/bmj.l6460

10. Become a reviewer for the National Fellowship Program: Information for new reviewers
From: JoEllen McBride [joellen.mcbride_at_gmail.com]

Graduate Women in Science is looking for subject matter experts in the field of Astronomy to review proposals for their National Fellowship Program.

Read the call at

https://www.gwis.org/page/fellowship_reviewer

Fill out the interest form at

https://forms.gle/B2go4nVdgM5hHYHUA

11. Biennial European Astrobiology Conference (BEACON)
From: JoEllen McBride [joellen.mcbride_at_gmail.com]

The Biennial European Astrobiology Conference (BEACON) will take place at the La Palma & Teneguia Princess Hotel on La Palma Island (Canary Islands, Spain) from 20-24 April 2020. During this meeting also the 2nd General Assembly of the EAI will take place.

12. Applied Galactic Dynamics Summer School
From: Kathryn V Johnston [kvj_at_astro.columbia.edu]

Applications are invited from graduate students for the "Applied Galactic Dynamics Summer School" to be held at the Center for Computational Astrophysics, Flatiron Institute in New York in Summer 2020. Please circulate the following information widely.

Applied Galactic Dynamics School Summer 2020 (July 6th - August 14th)

It's a magnificent time to be a Galactic dynamicist.

The Applied Galactic Dynamics School is all about connections: connecting dynamical models and the vast data sets now available; connecting junior and senior astronomers to pool their expertise and enthusiasm; and, in particular, connecting the next generation of dynamicists to these exciting times.

We invite graduate students in all fields of (extra)Galactic Astronomy and Dynamics to apply, and to join us this Summer toward understanding the dynamics of our Galaxy.

Please see http://galacticdynamics.nyc for more details on the school and how to apply.

13. Global gender equality will take another 100 years to achieve, study finds
From: Nicolle Zellner [nzellner_at_albion.edu]

By Jessie Yeung

The World Economic Forum's annual Global Gender Gap Report ranked Iceland as the most gender-equal country for the 11th consecutive year, followed by its Nordic neighbors, Norway, Finland, and Sweden.

The report analyzed 153 countries in their progress toward gender parity, focusing on four main themes: economic participation, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment.

Read the report at

http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GGGR_2020.pdf

14. First-Year Graduate Students in Physics and Astronomy: Characteristics and Background
From: JoEllen McBride [joellen.mcbride_at_gmail.com]

By Patrick Mulvey, Anne Marie Porter, and Starr Nicholson

"The number of first-year students enrolled in US physics graduate programs has remained relatively stable in recent years and was around 3,200 students in the 2018-19 academic year. There were 241 first-year graduate students enrolled in US graduate astronomy programs in the 2018-19 academic year. Most first-year graduate students held an undergraduate degree in physics or astronomy and felt well or adequately prepared for their graduate studies. The majority of first-year students were funded with teaching assistantships and received full tuition waivers. Their long-term employment goals varied considerably by both a student’s highest anticipated physics degree and citizenship status."

15. 'Miss America can be a scientist': Camille Schrier of Virginia wins after onstage chemistry experiment
From: Katie Eckert [kathleen.eckert_at_gmail.com]

By Emily Yahr

"Instead of bikinis or evening gowns, the focus is on interviews and social impact initiatives. For the second year in a row, the competition stayed away from even alluding to physical appearance. At the start of the two-hour broadcast, the 51 women were introduced by career category: science, business, arts and education.

So it was quite fitting for this revamped show that the winner (of the crown and $50,000 scholarship) was Miss Virginia Camille Schrier, a 24-year-old scientist from Richmond studying to earn a doctor of pharmacy degree at Virginia Commonwealth University. She certainly stole the show during the talent portion - as the other four finalists performed jazz dances, twirled batons and sang songs, Schrier put on a chemistry demonstration."

16. Women Representation on Company Boards Increased From 5% In 2012 To 13% In 2018
From: Alessandra Aloisi [aloisi_at_stsci.edu]

The number of women on company boards has increased from 5 per cent in 2012 to 13 per cent in 2018, according to Zinnov-Intel India Gender Diversity Benchmark, a study by management consulting firm Zinnov in association with Intel India. The significant rise in the percentage of women on company boards level can be attributed to the mandate of having at least one woman as board director.

17. Grading for STEM Equity
From: JoEllen McBride [joellen.mcbride_at_gmail.com]

By Colleen Flaherty

"Harsher grading policies in science, technology, engineering and math courses disproportionately affect women - because women value good grades significantly more than men do, according to a new working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

What to do? The study's authors suggest restricting grading policies that equalize average grades across classes, such as curving all courses around a B grade. Beyond helping close STEM's gender gap, they wrote, such a policy change would boost overall enrollment in STEM classes."

18. Job Opportunities

For those interested in increasing excellence and diversity in their organizations, a list of resources and advice is here:

https://aas.org/comms/cswa/resources/Diversity

- Staff Scientist in Petrology or Geo/Cosmochemistry, The Carnegie Institution for Science, Washington, DC campus https://jobs.carnegiescience.edu/jobs/staff-scientist-in-petrology-or-geo-cosmochemistry

- Staff Scientist in Astronomy or Planetary Science, The Carnegie Institution for Science, Washington, DC campus https://jobs.carnegiescience.edu/jobs/staff-scientist-in-astronomy-or-planetary-science

- Postdoctoral Position on Asteroid Photometry, French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), Nice, France https://euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/473283?fbclid=IwAR2gLVqSPtcSiITZpUlwTVSYrtGG2VLvsX0VXCDPIB_IPwD-qX_hntFKNPE

- Postdoctoral Position in the Cosmic Ice Lab at NASA GSFC, Greenbelt, MD https://cresst2.umd.edu/opportunities/Postdoc_Processing%20of%20Amino%20Acids%20from%20Ice%20Radiation%20Experiments_HU.pdf

- Postdoc in Observational or Experimental Astrophysics, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ https://jobregister.aas.org/ad/b37cd3ec

- Solar Observer - Associate Scientist II, Mauna Loa Solar Observatory, Hawaii https://ucar.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/UCAR_Careers/job/Mauna-Loa-Solar-Observatory/Solar-Observer---Associate-Scientist-II_REQ-2019-123-1?fbclid=IwAR0KYSetGik6cXvfPoRQk9hmS-whIs_ByhrBQ9Ph0IRz5CSLrFya1mbNBpU

- Observatory Operations Manager, Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff, AZ https://lowell.edu/about/employment

- Extra-Galactic PhD Student, Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff, AZ https://lowell.edu/about/employment

19. How to Submit to the AASWOMEN newsletter

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21. Access to Past Issues

https://aas.org/comms/cswa/AASWOMEN

Each annual summary includes an index of topics covered.

Women In Astronomy

Friday, December 20, 2019

AASWomen Newsletter for December 20, 2019

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