Alumna Michelle K. Lee, director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, writes for USA Today about the need for women to pursue STEM careers. “The lack of gender parity is not just a social issue, it is an economic imperative,” Lee writes. “We need to get more girls into STEM education, and we need to empower more women in STEM professions.”
Prof. Sara Seager speaks with Robin Wilson of The Chronicle of Higher Education for a piece about what it’s like to be a female astronomer. Seager explains that MIT is one of few places where she isn’t treated differently because she’s female. "I don’t think about my gender while I’m here,” she says.
David Rosen writes for Teen Urban News about Girls Day at the MIT Museum, an event that celebrates women in STEM. “Science involves everything,” said graduate student Olivia Hentz, the event’s opening speaker. “You get to learn something no one has ever known. We hope you will be inspired to go back to your schools and study science.”
In an interview with NPR, alumna Noramay Cadena and her daughter, Chassitty Saldana, discuss how Cadena completed her MIT degrees while raising Saldana. Cadena tells Saldana that graduating from MIT “gave me this huge sense of hope for what you would do."
Prof. Marcia Bartusiak writes for The Washington Post about Eileen Pollack’s book, “The Only Woman in the Room,” which examines the obstacles facing women in science. Bartusiak writes that, “Pollack draws attention to this important and vexing problem with a personal narrative, beautifully written and full of important insights on the changes needed to make those barriers crumble.”
President L. Rafael Reif speaks with Fortune’s Erika Fry about Lubna Olayan, CEO and deputy chairperson of Olayan Financing Co., who was named to Fortune’s list of Most Powerful Women. Reif says that Olayan’s mental nimbleness is “an asset and a gift that few people have."
Prof. Thomas Levenson writes for The Boston Globe about sexism in science. “Sadly and infuriatingly, the habits of mind that once almost entirely barred women from the lab remain, less potent, perhaps, but still at work,” writes Levenson.
Stephanie McFeeters writes for The Boston Globe about the social media campaign #ILookLikeAnEngineer, highlighting the MIT students, faculty and alumni who participated in the trend by posting their photos. The campaign stemmed from the negative response one female engineer received after appearing in an ad campaign for her IT company.
Last weekend Institute Professor Mildred Dresselhaus became the first woman to receive the IEEE Medal of Honor for her pioneering work with carbon materials, reports Melissa Lott for Scientific American. Lotts writes that Dresselhaus is known “for her work with buckminsterfullerenes (buckyballs), nanotubes and graphene as well as her dedicated work ethic and caring nature.”
Boston Globe reporter Katherine Landergan writes that during MIT’s 2015 Commencement, U.S. CTO Megan Smith ’86, SM ’88 urged graduates to “be kind, be inclusive, be open.” President L. Rafael Reif asked graduates to have a “bold willingness to disrupt the status quo, to make the world a better place.”
Institute Professor Mildred Dresselhaus has been named the recipient of the 2015 IEEE Medal of Honor “for her leadership and contributions across many fields of science and engineering,” reports Melissa Lott for Scientific American. Dresselhaus is the first woman to receive the award, the IEEE’s highest honor.
Alumna Noramay Cadena writes for WBUR about encouraging Latinas to pursue STEM careers, sharing how an MIT student inspired her. “Here was a successful person who looked like me, who sounded like me, and who truly understood my life experience, telling me I had what it took to go to MIT.”
In a piece for The Huffington Post, Zeynep Ilyaz explains how Prof. Sangeeta Bhatia serves as an inspiration to her, citing her research advances in biotech and medicine, and her mentorship of women pursuing careers in STEM fields. “Dr. Bhatia is constantly looking for the next groundbreaking discovery in health, which makes her an excellent role model for girls and women,” Ilyaz writes.
Molly Reynolds writes for The Huffington Post about an MIT study that found the most successful teams contain a higher percentage of women. “Extremely interesting was the successful teams' ability to detect the emotion of their teammates' written words when they worked online.”
Derek Thompson of The Atlantic writes about a series of MIT studies that suggest that higher social sensitivity displayed by women makes them more valuable than men in groups working on collaborative problem-solving. Thompson predicts that factors such as these will result in an eventual inversion of the gender wage gap.