Issue of October 10, 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. Filomena Nunes and Tools for Women in STEM
2. Inside UC San Diego’s Out-of-This-World Impact
3. Annie Walker: The astronomer with an asteroid, but no known photographs
4. Remembering Jane Goodall
5. Breaking barriers: ten essential steps to achieve gender equality in academia through scientific societies
6. Meet the Physicist Who Wrote Over 2,000 Wikipedia Biographies for Women in STEM
7. OSU professor stirs passion for STEM through Native American stories
8. Mentorships, Support Groups Help Women Stick With STEM
9. Job Opportunities
10. How to Submit to the AASWOMEN newsletter
11. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWOMEN newsletter
12. 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.
"When Filomena Nunes began teaching in the Physics Department at Michigan State University, she noticed many of her female students hitting a wall as they pursued degrees in STEM subjects, particularly in physics. Nunes knew the issues women face pursuing STEM degrees—bias, harassment, exclusion, imposter syndrome, lack of mentoring—the list goes on. As she watched her students struggle through the same issues Nunes faced as a student while obtaining her degree in physics and doctorate in nuclear physics, she realized she had to act."
Read more at
https://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/2025/10/filomena-nunes-and-tools-for-women-in.html
In celebration of World Space Week, an international celebration of science and technology coordinated by the United Nations, we’re highlighting a few of UC San Diego’s cross-disciplinary contributions to space science: UC San Diego has produced four NASA astronauts — all women.
Read more at
https://today.ucsd.edu/story/inside-uc-san-diegos-out-of-this-world-impact
The International Astronomical Union has named an asteroid after the Victorian stargazer, who studied the skies for 25 years from Cambridge University, but whose work has remained forgotten for more than a century.
Read more at
Jane was passionate about empowering young people to become involved in conservation and humanitarian projects, and she led many educational initiatives focused on both wild and captive chimpanzees. She was always guided by her fascination with the mysteries of evolution and her staunch belief in the fundamental need to respect all forms of life on Earth.
Read more at
https://janeslegacy.org/beyond-the-founder/
"The gender gap in STEM is a persistent global issue. Scientific societies can address this by promoting gender equity through collaboration, advocacy, and leadership. This study analyses gender representation on executive boards and the presence of gender groups in freshwater societies. Drawing on a decade of experience, it proposes ten actionable steps, highlights obstacles, and calls on societies to actively foster gender equity within academia and beyond."
Read more at
https://www.nature.com/articles/s44185-025-00105-6
Jess Wade is a British physicist who couldn’t help but notice a lack of representation or acknowledgement of women in STEM. In the past eight years, she has fought for diversity in STEM by writing more than 2,000 Wikipedia biographies dedicated to females and other underrepresented scientists.
Read more at
https://mymodernmet.com/jessica-wade-wikipedia-biographies-women-in-stem/
Gardner-Vandy, a member of the Choctaw Nation, is now working with tribes to bring native stories to middle school classrooms through a curriculum designed to bridge the gap between modern technology and the ancient world. Through her program, called Native Earth Native Sky, she wants to spark a passion for STEM by exposing students to long-ago perspectives.
Read more at
https://journalrecord.com/2025/10/07/native-earth-native-sky-stem-choctaw/
"Increasingly, those in the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering, and math are seeking ways to support women as a way of addressing a chronic retention problem: Compared with other professions, women tend to drop out of STEM at a higher rate than in other fields, whether it’s during college or in the workforce."
Read more at
https://www.govtech.com/education/higher-ed/mentorships-support-groups-help-women-stick-with-stem
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
- CIERA Postdoctoral Fellowships and Postdoctoral Associate positions in theoretical or observational astronomy and astrophysics, Northwestern University
https://ciera.northwestern.edu/opportunities/
- University of Nevada, Reno tenure-track faculty position open to all fields of astronomy
https://aas.org/jobregister/ad/6ba8bf92
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