Issue of June 14, 2024
eds: Jeremy Bailin, Nicolle Zellner, Sethanne Howard, and Hannah Jang-Condell
[We hope you all are taking care of yourselves and each other. --eds.]
This week's issues:
1. Celebrate Black in Space Week 2024
2. Eclipsed No More: Women Astronomers You Should Know
3. AfNWA Women in Astronomy in Africa Book
4. Latest Elsevier Gender Equality Study Reveals 20 Years Of Progress, But Challenges Remain For Women in Research And Innovation
5. Pioneer Women Astronomers Flourished a Century Ago
6. Dr Heloise Stevance wins 2024 Caroline Herschel Prize Lectureship
7. 2024 Kavli Prize in Astrophysics Awardee Sara Seager
8. ‘3 Body Problem’ Proves Why TV Needs More Women in STEM
9. Astronomy on Tap
10. Astronomy Festival on the National Mall
11. Job Opportunities
12. How to Submit to the AASWOMEN newsletter
13. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWOMEN newsletter
14. Access to Past Issues
An online version of this newsletter will be available at http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/ at 3:00 PM ET every Friday.
Black In Astro is excited to announce #BlackSpaceWeek, which runs from June 16 to June 22, 2024 and will provide the opportunity for the Black Space Community to celebrate our multidimensionality and everything that it entails. Starting with the #BSWRollCall and continuing for the rest of #BlackSpaceWeek, we cannot wait to get into #MTheory and what it means to be #AfroDynamic; we will provide a #LiftOff platform to showcase our collective talents and reflect on #ContainingMultitudes; and finish the week by putting on #ForTheCulture and looking towards an #NDimensional future by honoring our past.
We are multidimensional beings made of stardust. This year, for #BlackSpaceWeek, the Black In Astro team wants to uplift how our community brings our multidimensional identities and experiences with us into Space.
Read more at
http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/2024/06/celebrate-black-in-space-week-2024.html
By Meg Metcalf
Meteor showers, comets, eclipses, and other celestial events have captured human interest and imagination for thousands of years. Astronomical phenomena have long been speculated over in the press, and curiosity in these phenomena have led us to better understand our world. Throughout history women have played a pivotal role in the field of astronomy and yet have rarely received the recognition they deserve. As in many fields, women’s work has often been eclipsed by their male counterparts or attributed to the institution they were affiliated with. As astronomy became professionalized, women were generally denied the required formal education to be considered a professional astronomer. Whether or not they were able to obtain a degree in the field, women’s stellar contributions to astronomy should not be overlooked. In honor of women’s history month, let’s learn about some lesser-known achievements of women in astronomy throughout the years.
Read more at
https://blogs.loc.gov/headlinesandheroes/2024/03/eclipsed-no-more-women-astronomers-you-should-know/
By African Astronomical Society
In preparation for the International Astronomical Union (IAU) General Assembly (GA) 2024, the first GA to be held in Africa (6-15 August 2024, Cape Town, South Africa), the African Network of Women in Astronomy (AfNWA) is planning to design an attractive storytelling book on professional female astronomers in Africa. The aim of this book is, on the one hand, to give more visibility to women astronomers in Africa, their research and their life stories, and on the other hand, to inspire and empower our young people and society at large through these stories.
Read more at
https://www.africanastronomicalsociety.org/2024/02/08/afnwa-women-in-astronomy-in-africa-book/
Elsevier, a global leader in scientific information and analytics, has released its latest report analyzing gender equality in research. Progress has been made, with women now representing 41% of researchers globally, but serious challenges persist in gender equality in research and innovation. For example, women represent just 33% of researchers in the physics sciences.
Read more at
Read the report at
https://www.elsevier.com/insights/gender-and-diversity-in-research
By Marshall Honorof
In the history of science, notable women can seem like a rarity. Astronomy is no exception. While many people recognize names like Galileo, Copernicus, and Hubble, they would be hard-pressed to name pioneers of the opposite sex. However, new research from the University of Chicago could help change that perception. More than 100 years ago, female astronomers flourished at the Yerkes Observatory in Wisconsin, and the work they did went well beyond simple stenography and computation.
In compiling the exhibit “Capturing the Stars: The Untold History of Women at Yerkes Observatory” Regenstein Library curators Andrea Twiss-Brooks and Kristine Palmieri assembled a large collection of photographs, notes, journals, and research tools from around 1920. They demonstrate that women have played an important role in the history of astronomy—at least, when given the chance to do so. Even though the exhibit has closed, the research is ongoing.
Read more at
https://worth.com/pioneer-women-astronomers-flourished-century-ago/
By Royal Astronomical Society
An astrophysicist spearheading the creation of a virtual assistant to help find exploding stars and hungry black holes has been named as the winner of the 2024 Caroline Herschel Prize Lectureship. Dr Heloise Stevance, of the University of Oxford, is a computational astronomer with a wide range of astrophysics and artificial intelligence (AI) expertise and an “impressive track record of first-author publications and invited talks”. Her lecture topic will be: ‘How can AI help us find exploding stars and hungry black holes?’
Dr Stevance called it “an honour” to be awarded the lectureship “and for the recognition that the future of AI in science will rely on individuals being ‘fluent’ in two fields to see both opportunities and pitfalls”.
Read more at
https://ras.ac.uk/news-and-press/news/ai-astronomer-wins-2024-caroline-herschel-prize-lectureship
By Edwin Cartlidge
The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters has awarded the 2024 Kavli Prize in Astrophysics to Sara Seager and David Charbonneau for their ground-breaking work on the discovery and characterization of extra-solar planets and their atmospheres.
Sara Seager has advanced the search for bio-signatures by investigating the theoretical applicability of transit spectroscopy to exoplanet atmospheres generally, predicting that a range of atoms and molecules, particularly alkali metals (in gas form), should be present. More specifically she has screened many molecular biomarkers, identifying the best such molecules for flagging up biological activity on a planet.
Seager has also done extensive work analysing what is known as the habitable zone, the range of radii from a given star in which planets would be neither too hot nor too cold to contain liquid water on their surfaces. She calculated how big this zone could be, taking into account atmospheric influences on a planet's temperature – such as the greenhouse effect.
Read more at
https://www.kavliprize.org/prizes/astrophysics/2024
By Tiana DeNicola
While numerous leading women representing scientists, technicians, engineers and mathematicians (STEM) have graced the screen throughout cinematic history, those pale in comparison to their male counterparts. Netflix’s “3 Body Problem” challenged this gender disparity and came out on top, dominating the charts for weeks.
According to Luminate, “3 Body Problem” has more than 3 billion minutes watched since its March release and spent seven weeks in Netflix’s Global Top 10. While the show features successful women in STEM, it’s worth noting Liu Cixin’s book, “The Three-Body Problem,” did not originally include strong female scientists like Jin Cheng (Jess Hong) and Auggie Salazar (Eiza González).
Read more at
https://variety.com/2024/tv/features/3-body-problem-female-stem-roles-1236026497/
By Astronomy On Tap
Astronomy on Tap was formed in New York City in 2013 by Meg Schwamb and Emily Rice. Previously, Meg had organized two Astronomy Uncorked events at a wine bar in New Haven, CT while she was a postdoctoral researcher at Yale, and Emily was looking for an excuse to socialize with other astronomers as faculty on the tenure-track. After the first (immensely successful, if we do say so ourselves) Astronomy on Tap event at the Way Station in Brooklyn on April 9, 2013, Meg, Emily, and others coordinated several more events in NYC, including the first one in uptown Manhattan and, still somewhat unbelievably, Astronomy on Deck in the Space Shuttle Pavilion at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum (pinch us!).
As quickly as the events gained popularity in NYC, they also spread to other locations! You see, the astronomy field fosters a wonderfully international scientific community, and astronomers tend to travel widely for research, conferences, collaborations, and career development.
Read more at
https://astronomyontap.org/about-us/
By Hofstra University
Hofstra University's Astronomy Festival on the National Mall (AFNM) in Washington, D.C., offers visitors a free guided tour of the sky on Saturday, June 22, from 6-11 p.m., and is organized by Dr. Donald Lubowich, Hofstra's Coordinator of Astronomy Outreach. AFNM features solar, optical, and radio telescope observations; hands-on activities, demonstrations, handouts, posters, banners, and videos; speakers from scientific and educational organizations, and a chance to mingle with astronomers.
Read more at
https://www.hofstra.edu/physics-astronomy/astronomy-festival.html
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#howtoincrease
- Department Chair of Physics and Applied Physics, University of Massachussetts Lowell, Boston, MA
https://explorejobs.uml.edu/en-us/job/523612/professor-and-department-chair-of-physics-and-applied-physics
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