Issue of April 25, 2025
eds: Jeremy Bailin, Sethanne Howard, Ferah Munshi, Stella Kafka, and Ben Keller
[We hope you all are taking care of yourselves and each other. --eds.]
This week's issues:
1. Women in Astronomy: Space for Students - Part 7 Nikola Mazzarella
2. STEM, Space and the Sparkle Trap
3. NSF starts to terminate grants
4. Study on the diversity of scientific collaboration networks
5. Suni Williams Has Set Many Records for Women in Space
6. Impacts of Restrictions on Federal Grant Funding in Physics and Astronomy Graduate Programs
7. How to Submit to the AASWOMEN newsletter
8. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWOMEN newsletter
9. 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.
In our popular Career Profile series, the AAS Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy has compiled dozens of interviews highlighting the diversity of career trajectories available to astronomers, planetary scientists, and those in related fields. In a twist on this series, we video-interviewed students in astronomy and astrophysics to highlight their personal and academic career paths. The purpose of this series is three-fold. It aims not only to give a voice and exposure to those who are up and coming in the field but also to give feedback to the Astronomical community at large about the experiences of students who identify as women. The hope is that these interviews will not only share advice and lessons learned but will shed light on how to encourage and inspire more women, from various backgrounds and skill sets, to follow space trajectories and reach towards the stars.
Below is our interview with Nikola Mazzarella, a Senior at the University of Hawaii at Manoa as of Fall 2024. Nikola, a recent NASA Communications intern, is majoring in Physics with a concentration in Astrophysics, and a minor in Earth and Planetary Exploration Technologies. While interning for the NASA Headquarters Office of Communication she made a tool in SharePoint that allows communicators to learn more about their target audience to engage with them more effectively. On top of that, she is the chief scientist for the VIA-SEES Mission, a small sat mission from the University of Hawaii-Manoa. Outside of astronomy and astrophysics, Nikola loves to surf, travel, and explore this world. She believes a key to her success is time management and balancing her work, play, and mental health effectively.
Read more at
https://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/2025/04/women-in-astronomy-space-for-students.html
By Jodi Bondi Norgaard
Despite its promise of progress, Blue Origin’s all-female spaceflight exposed the persistent double standards women face in STEM—where success is still too often judged by sparkle, not substance.
Read more at
https://msmagazine.com/2025/04/18/blue-origin-female-astronaut-women-stem-gender-stereotypes/
By Jeffery Mervis at Science
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has spent decades—and billions of dollars—trying to attract more women and members of underrepresented groups into science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).
Not anymore.
Today NSF announced such efforts “are no longer aligned with its priorities” and that it is terminating any existing grant designed to improve the demographics of the scientific workforce. Grants related to “misinformation/disinformation” are also being axed.
Read more at
Weihua Li and collaborators have conducted a study on the diversity of scientific collaborations, and found that the main factor that influences the degree of diversity in an established scientist's career is who they collaborated with as early-career scientists.
Read the peer-reviewed study at
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43588-025-00795-9
By Sean Mowbray
After nine-months stranded on the International Space Station (ISS), Sunita, “Suni,” Williams touched down with fellow NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore on March 16, 2025. A series of failures on Boeing’s Starliner capsule greatly extended a trip that was supposed to last only eight days.
Not that this phased the two veteran astronauts. Williams described her unplanned and prolonged stay on the ISS as getting tunnel vision as she and Wilmore got on with the job.
“You aren’t aware of what’s going on down here, [on Earth],” Williams said at a press conference after the crew’s arrival back onto the surface. “We were really focused on doing our part,” she added, as the two astronauts played their part as crew members on the ISS, carrying out maintenance and conducting experiments. She was appointed the station’s commander in September 2024.
Read more at
https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/suni-williams-has-set-many-records-for-women-in-space
Stories about academic programs reducing the number of graduate students they will enroll due to changes in approaches to federal funding have recently made headlines.
Given the significance of this issue, AIP’s research team engaged in a systematic survey to better understand the extent of recent changes in federal funding and policy. We asked all 292 department chairs at departments offering graduate degrees in physics and astronomy in the US a few questions to better understand the impacts. Our questionnaire was in the field from April 3 to April 16. We received responses from 115 departments, 76 in public institutions and 39 in private institutions, to our brief survey; this is a 39% response rate. Here is what we learned.
Read more at
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