Crosspost: From Rocket Science To Space Travel, This Unicorn Founder’s Journey To Success

Eds. note: With Black In Astro, we celebrate #BlackSpaceWeek this week. The below cross-posted article highlights the career of Aisha Bowe, who is scheduled to fly in space in 2024, as only the 6th Black female astronaut in history. Ad astra, Aisha!

By Ebony Flake, for Essence

"Standing apart isn't necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes, it's a signal that you are unique and doing something extraordinary," Aisha Bowe shared.

Image Credit: Essence

Feeling less certain about her direction than she perceived her peers to be, Aisha enrolled at the local Washtenaw Community College. There, she met a diverse group of people with different backgrounds and aspirations. As they collectively chartered the course of self-discovery, she realized that many of the beliefs she held about herself were not her own but shaped by others’ opinions, expectations, and resentful projections of their unfulfilled aspirations. “I had to stop and go: There’s a reason why you don’t feel confident. There’s a reason why you don’t feel beautiful. There’s a reason why you don’t feel strong. Are those reasons yours? Or where they imposed upon you?” The answers would become clear in time.

Today, Aisha Bowe is a two-time startup founder, including the elite engineering firm STEMBoard, twice acknowledged as one of America’s fastest-growing. She’s also a Blue Origin astronaut, a business thought leader, and a former NASA aerospace engineer. It’s been an exciting journey for that spunky teen unclear about her path. “I still, to this day, can’t understand why society expects you to know what you want to be before you even begin to understand who you are,” she told ESSENCE.

Read more at

https://www.essence.com/news/money-career/aisha-bowe-rocket-science-unicorn-founder/

Bowe is scheduled to go to space in 2024 as the first Black woman on the New Shepard rocket, part of Jeff Bezos's spaceflight company Blue Origin. Read about Aisha's astronaut selection at

https://afrotech.com/aisha-bowe-first-black-woman-to-fly-with-blue-origin-to-space?item=2

Information about Black in Astro's #BlackSpaceWeek can be found at 

https://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/2024/06/celebrate-black-in-space-week-2024.html

Cross-post: ‘It’s a constant hum’: a planetary geologist calls out racism in academia

[Eds. note: As part of its commitment to becoming an agent of change and helping to end discriminatory practices and systemic racism, Nature has published a special issue focused on science as “a shared experience" and published several editorials by scientists in various fields. One of them, by planetary geologist Dr. Martha Gilmore, is cross-posted here.]

Photo from The Middletown Press

In March, Martha Gilmore delivered an unusually moving keynote lecture at the annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Woodlands, Texas. Woven into a talk about the geology of Venus was a challenge for the mostly white, mostly male audience to think deeply about who is — or rather, who is not — doing research in this field.

According to data from the American Geosciences Institute, people from under-represented minority groups — including Black people — made up less than 6.7% of those awarded geoscience doctorates in 2019. And the proportion of those who continue in geoscience in some capacity shrank from 23% in 2010 to 19% in 2017.

“If I’m under-represented, then white folks are over-represented by definition,” said Gilmore, who is Black and a professor of earth and environmental sciences at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. “So what I’m going to ask you to do is think about, scientifically, why that’s an issue.”

Read more about Dr. Gilmore's experiences here.

More on Dr. Gilmore's research and achievements can be found at:
Mazursky Lecture (2022)
Claudia J. Alexander Prize (2022)
Persistence Pays Off (2022)
Bromery Award (2020)

Crosspost: Science must overcome its racist legacy: Nature’s guest editors speak

By Melissa Nobles, Chad Womack, Ambroise Wonkam & Elizabeth Wathuti

Nature editors Chad Womack, Elizabeth Wathuti, Ambroise Wonkam, and Melissa Nobles will be releasing a series of special issues on the intersection of racism and science. Credit: Gretchen Ertl and University of Cape Town. 

Science is a human endeavour that is fuelled by curiosity and a drive to better understand and shape our natural and material world. Science is also a shared experience, subject both to the best of what creativity and imagination have to offer and to humankind’s worst excesses. For centuries, European governments supported the enslavement of African populations and the subjugation of Indigenous people around the world. During that period, a scientific enterprise emerged that reinforced racist beliefs and cultures. Apartheid, colonization, forced labour, imperialism and slavery have left an indelible mark on science.

Although valiant and painful freedom struggles eventually led to decolonization, the impacts of those original racist beliefs continue to reverberate and have been reified in the institutional policies and attitudes that govern the ‘who’ and ‘how’ of individuals’ participation in the modern, global scientific enterprise. In our opinion, racist beliefs have contributed to a lack of diversity, equity and inclusion, and the marginalization of Indigenous and African diasporic communities in science on a national and global scale.

Science and racism share a history because scientists, science’s institutions and influential supporters of science either directly or indirectly supported core racist beliefs: the idea that race is a determinant of human traits and capacities (such as the ability to build civilizations); and the idea that racial differences make white people superior. Although the most egregious forms of racism are unlawful, racism persists in science and affects diverse communities worldwide. Following the murder of George Floyd in 2020 and the expansion of the Black Lives Matter movement into science, Nature was among those institutions that pledged to listen, learn and change. In an Editorial1, it said, “The enterprise of science has been — and remains — complicit in systemic racism, and it must strive harder to correct those injustices and amplify marginalized voices.”

Read the rest of the editorial here and look out for the first of Nature's series and science and racism at the end of this year.

Crosspost: The Unwritten Laws of Physics for Black Women

Written by Katrina Miller for Wired

Pictured (left to right): Andrea Bryant, LaNijah Flagg, Katrina Miller, and Ayanna Matthews are doctoral students studying physics at the University of Chicago. 

At the entrance to my lab’s clean room, I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror: I look like a clown. I’m drowning in a disposable coverall that hangs off of me in droopy folds, and my size 7½ feet are swallowed up by the smallest rubber boots the lab had on hand—a men’s size 12. The thick mass of curls framing my face only accentuates the caricature.

Reaching for the box of hairnets perched on a nearby counter, I fish out a thin, papery cap with a sigh. How the hell is this going to fit over my fro? I flatten my roots and tie my hair into the tightest bun I can muscle. Stretched as far as it’ll go, the hairnet only covers the back of my head. I position another over my forehead and a third to straddle the middle. Has no physicist here ever been a woman or had to contend with hair like mine? With effort, I tug the hood of my coverall over the hairnets. The taut fabric rustles loudly in my ears as I open the door to join my peers.

I am here, in a basement lab at the University of Chicago, to work on a small-scale particle detector that might help in the search for dark matter, the invisible glue that physicists believe holds the universe together. Dark matter emits no light and, as far as anyone can tell, doesn’t interact with ordinary matter in any familiar ways. But we know it exists from the way it influences the motions of the stars. The allure of dark matter is what inspired me to pursue a PhD in physics. But in more ways than one, I keep feeling like I just don’t fit.

Shout out to AAAS Mass Media Fellow and AASWomen blog contributor, Katrina Miller, for her powerful article on Black women's experiences in physics in Wired. 

Read the rest of the article at: https://www.wired.com/story/the-unwritten-laws-of-physics/

Crosspost: The other physics problem

 Written by R.M. Davis for symmetry magazine

Black physicists say efforts to recruit and retain more Black students must concentrate on challenges they face at both Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Primarily White Institutions. Credit: Sandbox Studio, Chicago and Lauren Jackson.

Alexander Gardner mailed his application to North Carolina A&T from what was likely a military prison cell somewhere in the US South. It was the mid-1950s; Gardner would have been in his late 20s. He had run away from home at the age of 14 to join the US Merchant Marines.

Gardner had been incarcerated for punching a commanding officer who called him a racial slur. He had only an 8th grade education, but North Carolina A&T—a university located in Greensboro, NC—saw his potential. They accepted him, and he graduated in 1958 with a degree in engineering physics. Five years later, Gardner became the first Black person to earn a physics PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He returned to North Carolina A&T the year after that, this time as a member of the physics faculty.

“That’s an unbelievable story,” says Arlene Maclin, a former physics professor who credits Gardner as one of her earliest and most important mentors.

However, it’s far from the only extraordinary tale of triumph over adversity to come out of the Black physics community. And it was possible, in part, due to the unique support Gardner found at North Carolina A&T, which is classified as an HBCU, a Historically Black College or University.

HBCUs have played an important role in bringing Black students into physics. Prior to 2003, HBCUs consistently graduated the majority of Black physics-degree holders. In the year 2000, HBCUs enrolled just 13% of all Black postsecondary students but awarded a staggering 60% of physics degrees earned by Black students that year. Those numbers have been on a steady decline in the years since, but HBCUs still produce a disproportionate share of Black physics graduates today.

Read the rest of the article at: https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/the-other-physics-problem 

Crosspost: A Life of Transdisciplinary Science, The Expeditions of Mae Jemison

Written by Michelle Hampson for AAAS

Dr. Mae Jemison—doctor, engineer, and Star Trek fan—was the first Black woman to travel into space.

In 1992, newly elected AAAS Fellow Dr. Mae Jemison was doing an experiment where she injected several female African clawed frogs with a hormone to induce ovulation. After harvesting and carefully analyzing batches of eggs under a microscope and fertilizing the healthiest looking ones, she would periodically re-assess the embryos and take microscopic images to document their development. This protocol was part of standard experiments to study reproduction – except that it was happening in space.

Jemison was one of 15 selected from 2,000 applicants to serve in NASA’s astronaut corps and later became the science mission specialist on board the STS-47 Spacelab-J, in partnership with the Japan Space Agency. Over the course of the eight-day space mission, Jemison was tasked with many experiments, including this research project to investigate how frog embryos develop in the ultra-low gravity conditions of space.

Read the rest of the article at: https://www.aaas.org/membership/member-spotlight/life-transdisciplinary-science-expeditions-mae-jemison

Crosspost: #BlackInQuantum

Written by R.M. Davis for Symmetry Magazine

For well over a century, Black researchers have played an important role in quantum physics, but their contributions remain unknown, obscured by a legacy of racism that continues to affect Black students' participation in physics to this day. Credit: Symmetry Magazine

The sixth person to earn a doctoral degree in physics from an American institution was African American scientist Edward Alexander Bouchet. It was 1876, just 11 years after the US had adopted a constitutional amendment that outlawed slavery. 

Never again have African Americans made up such a large percentage of US physicists. In fact, it would take another 42 years before a second African American man earned a physics PhD in the United States. 

That was Elmer Imes, a contemporary of Albert Einstein, who earned his degree from the University of Michigan in 1918. His doctoral work established some of the earliest direct experimental evidence of quantum theory, making him a crucial historical figure in quantum physics and quantum information science. 

But the accomplishments of Black scientists like Imes and Bouchet are not well known, says Charles Brown, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley. “Black people have been contributing to the progress of research groups for a long time, and just not really having enough of a spotlight on them… which is why when you go to Wikipedia, and you try to look people up, it's hard to find anything,” he says. 

Like Imes, Brown searches for insights into the quantum realm. And like fellow Yale graduate Bouchet, Brown finds himself in a small pool of physics PhDs: According to a survey by the American Institute of Physics, “quantum foundations and information science” ranks among the smallest subfields in physics, having granted an average of just 30 PhDs per year in 2017 and 2018. 

The US and other nations plan to grow what they’re calling the “quantum workforce,” and they’re going to need people with the right level of expertise to fill it, says Thomas Searles, an associate professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago. “There is a large issue of this new, burgeoning industry where there are going to be significant problems with the workforce and sustaining it,” he says. 

Physicists like Searles and Brown see an opportunity during this period of growth: to prioritize diversity, equity and inclusion now, rather than trying to fix more entrenched issues later. They suggest this will require confronting systemic problems in education and academia while simultaneously investing in programs that will help Black researchers succeed. 

The hope is that there will be more physicists like Imes and Bouchet. But their stories will feature fewer frustrations and more support—and people will make sure to tell them. 

Learn more about Searles and Brown's ongoing efforts to create a sense of community and recognition among Black students passionate about physics at: 
https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/black-in-quantum 

Crosspost: A physicist’s lessons about race, power, and the universe

Written by Neel Dhanesha for Vox

Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is an assistant professor of physics and a core faculty member in the women's studies department at the University of New Hampshire. Credit: Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

When Chanda Prescod-Weinstein was a 10-year-old growing up in East Los Angeles, she came across the Errol Morris documentary A Brief History of Time, which chronicled the life of the physicist Stephen Hawking. Watching it, Prescod-Weinstein says, she realized Hawking “was being paid to use math all day to solve problems Einstein hadn’t worked out.”

For a queer Black Jewish kid from a working-class neighborhood who liked doing math, that seemed like a pretty good deal. “That was really where I got my first taste of the idea that math is kind of like the language of the universe,” Prescod-Weinstein told me.

She’s now an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at the University of New Hampshire, where she studies dark matter and particle physics. She’s also on the core faculty of the university’s Women’s Studies department — a seemingly unusual combination that hints at the multifaceted approach she brings to her work.

In 2021, Prescod-Weinstein published The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, & Dreams Deferred, a wide-ranging book that is both a scientific explainer and an argument that unjust power structures shape the world of physics. She tells stories of subatomic particles like baryons, which are the building blocks of atoms; she critiques a trend she’s seen, in which writers compare the mystery and invisibility of dark matter to the lived experiences of Black people. In a chapter called “Rape Is Part of This Scientific Story” — a chapter that grew unexpectedly out of her writing on the dark universe, and that she debated including in the book — she writes about how her own experience of sexual assault shaped her understanding of injustices in her field.

Read Dhanesha's full and fascinating interview with Dr. Prescod-Weinstein at:

https://www.vox.com/22880089/physics-race-chanda-prescod-weinstein-disordered-cosmos