Issue of July 10, 2026
eds: Jeremy Bailin, 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. Crosspost: Building a culture of inclusion and allyship for queer astronomers
2. From the Archives: Career Profile: Astronomer to Analytics Company Founder and Chief Scientist
3. Benjamin Franklin NextGen Award
4. Dr. Isobel Romero-Shaw awarded Caroline Herschel Prize Lectureship 2026
5. Having a child during grad school is especially hard on women
6. Hong Kong’s first astronaut inspires students to reach for the stars
7. L’Oréal-UNESCO for Women in Science Week 2026: Celebrating excellence and inspiring future generations
8. Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin: She Discovered What Stars Are Made Of
9. The Elements of Marie Curie
10. University of Valencia action to promote balanced participation of women and men in Astronomy and Astrophysics
11. Women Nobel Laureates in STEM (2000–2023): Life Stories, Challenges, and How They Achieved Impact for Success
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.
SGMA, the Committee for Sexual-Orientation and Gender Minorities in Astronomy, was recently featured in Nature.com. SGMA wrote an article discussing the history of the committee, which began through informal dinners at AAS conferences. These dinners provided queer astronomers and allies with community and the space to share their experiences within the profession. SGMA also highlights how it brings queer astronomers together now through AAS conferences, online meet-ups, and community-sourced resources on inclusion and allyship.
In the Nature.com article, SGMA states, "Thus, it is imperative that all members of the astronomy community, not just those who identify as queer, engage in advocacy efforts to protect and advance the rights of queer individuals."
Read more at
https://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/2026/07/crosspost-building-culture-of-inclusion.html
The AAS Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy and the AAS Employment Committee have compiled dozens of interviews highlighting the diversity of career trajectories available to astronomers. The interviews share advice and lessons learned from individuals on those paths.
This week's interview, from the 2016 archives, is with Dr. Genevieve Graves, an astronomer who left astronomy to co-found a "people analytics" company, hiQ Labs, and become its chief data scientist. Dr. Graves received her Ph.D. at UC Santa Cruz working with Professor Sandra Faber. Following her Ph.D., she went to the UC Berkeley Department of Astronomy as a Miller Fellow and then to the Department of Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University as a postdoctoral fellow. Her astronomical research focussed on star formation histories and galaxy evolution.
Read more at
https://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/2026/07/from-archives-career-profile-astronomer.html
The Franklin Institute, is now inviting nominations of worthy candidates for the Benjamin Franklin NextGen Award, an award for outstanding early-career investigators presented by The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia.
https://fi.edu/en/awards/nominations/benjamin-franklin-nextgen-award
First presented in 2021, the Benjamin Franklin NextGen Award is bestowed each year to an early-career investigator for a transformative discovery, development, innovation, or invention in science or engineering. The focus of the award annually rotates through seven disciplines; the 2028 Benjamin Franklin NextGen Award will be presented in Physics & Astronomy. The committee will accept nominations for any candidate you consider early career, but our expectation is that within these disciplines, early-career investigators are likely to be at the rank of assistant professor, recently tenured associate professor, or equivalent.
Recipients of the Benjamin Franklin NextGen Award receive a crystal award and $10,000 honorarium. The deadline for external nominations for the 2028 award is September 15, 2026. You can find more information about The Franklin Institute Awards Program here (https://fi.edu/en/awards) and the Benjamin Franklin NexGen Award in particular, including the nomination process, here (https://fi.edu/en/awards/nominations/benjamin-franklin-nextgen-award).
Should you be unable to complete a nomination package, but wish to identify a strong candidate, please feel free to reach out to Beth Scheraga (bscheraga_at_fi.edu) with your recommendation. You can also contact Beth with any questions you may have about the Benjamin Franklin NexGen Award and the nomination process.
By Cardiff University
Dr Isobel Romero-Shaw, who is based at Cardiff University's Gravity Exploration Institute at the School of Physics and Astronomy, is the winner of the 2026 Caroline Herschel Prize Lectureship.
Established in 2018 by what is now the Herschel Society in association with the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS), the lectureship celebrates Caroline’s memory by supporting promising women astronomers early in their careers.
Dr Romero Shaw’s lecture, “Violent Beginnings Have Violent Ends: Deciphering the Origins of Binary Compact Object Collisions with Gravitational Waves” is hosted by the University of Bath in November 2026 in cooperation with the RAS as part of a public lecture series.
Read more at
By Katie Langin
After becoming a mother during the final year of her Ph.D., geographer Lauren Gifford finished her program with a deep-seated anger about the lack of support she received from her university as she navigated pregnancy, the aftereffects of a traumatic delivery, and child care. “It was just so hard in so many ways, and I feel like I finished the program out of spite,” says Gifford, now a senior adviser at the climate nonprofit Project Drawdown.
When walking became excruciating at 8 months pregnant, Gifford says she was denied a request for a complimentary campus parking permit. When she had to miss a semester as a teaching assistant because her due date fell in the middle of the term, the dean’s office chastised her for taking too much time off. And when she later signed up for 2 days per week of day care to finish writing her dissertation, it cost 110% of her stipend. “It was so demoralizing,” Gifford says.
Gifford is among the relative minority of researchers who have children during their Ph.D. According to a new study of more than 8000 researcher parents in 119 countries, only 21% of women and 27% of men started to have children during their Ph.D. program. And mothers face particular challenges when navigating parenthood while in graduate school, the study findings indicate.
Read more at
https://www.science.org/content/article/having-child-during-grad-school-especially-hard-women
Read the full study at
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10734-026-01668-4
By Young Post
Watching Hong Kong’s first astronaut, Lai Ka-ying, launch into space felt like a dream come true for 16-year-old Valerie Chiu Wing-yee. The teen was captivated by the historic moment in May when Lai lifted off as the only woman on the Shenzhou-23 mission.
“It gives Hong Kong people a great sense of pride because it shows that travelling to space is not limited by gender or [where you are from],” Valerie said. She is a Form Four student at St Mary’s Canossian College.
Valerie added that Lai’s journey was a powerful reminder to step out of one’s comfort zone.
“Her transition from a background in computer science and digital forensics to becoming Hong Kong’s first female astronaut shows that we should not stop pursuing new opportunities, even if they involve fields we aren’t used to,” she shared.
Read more at
By UNESCO
From 8 to 11 June 2026, UNESCO and the Fondation L’Oréal welcomed the five laureates of the 2026 L’Oréal-UNESCO for Women in Science International Awards to Paris for a week of exchanges, discovery and celebration. Bringing together outstanding researchers from around the world, the Week highlighted scientific excellence while strengthening connections between science, society and future generations.
Read more at
As part of the National Science Foundation Discovering Our Universe exhibition, read the National Air and Space Museum biography of Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, who transformed our understanding of the universe by discovering what stars are made of.
Read more at
By Karina Cooper, Corinne Mona, and Allison Rein
At the end of May, noted history of science author Dava Sobel gave the lecture “At Mme. Curie’s Lab: Radioactivity and a Place for Women in Science ” at the American Institute of Physics (AIP) Washington, DC office. Part of the AIP Lyne Starling Trimble Lecture series, the talk focused on the life of Marie Curie and the women who worked with her in her lab, which was the subject of her 2024 book The Elements of Marie Curie: How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science. A full recording of the lecture is available on the AIP History YouTube channel.
Read more at
https://www.aip.org/library/ex-libris-universum/the-elements-of-marie-curie
Watch the lecture recording at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXS1yXwIm9c
Universitat de València has a new research grant call in its Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics intended to address the difficulty in attracting women to the first stages of their research career.
Read more at
By GSMA
Women are significantly underrepresented in STEM — only 26 women have won a Nobel Prize in physics, chemistry, or medicine compared to 617 men since 1901. This underrepresentation is not only a matter of social equity; it actively limits the diversity of thought in the technology systems that increasingly shape our world. Daisy Wu's thesis addresses a gap in existing scholarship: while many studies document the existence of barriers women face in STEM, far fewer explore how the most successful women have overcome those barriers and what enabled them to achieve transformative impact.
The study examined the 11 women who won the Nobel Prize in Physics, Chemistry, or Medicine/Physiology after the year 2000 — a deliberate choice to focus on an era defined by the rise of the internet, high-tech industries, and artificial intelligence. Drawing on their biographies, published interviews, life stories, and newspaper accounts, the researcher conducted a rigorous six-phase thematic analysis to identify the patterns behind their success.
Read more at
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