Cambridge University Girls in STEM

28/02/2021

Girls in STEM - Empowering STEM Through Inclusivity is looking for 4 volunteers doing research in STEM fields keen to inspire young girls by talking to them about their work! 🧬⚗️🔭🧲⚙️💻

Next week, on Thursday, March 4th from 6:30 - 7:30 PM, we are hosting a panel with a local girl guides group - 38th Cambridge Brownies Girl Guides Division (the audience consists of 7-10-year-olds). You will be discussing your path in the scientific field and current work for ~5 minutes with approximately 10 minutes of questions. If you can make it, please fill out this form (https://forms.gle/ktxZ2jMUnYh4e9UB6
) by Monday, March 1st, 12:59 PM BST. We will have a brief session on Wednesday, March 3rd at 7:00 PM (exact time can be better adapted to your schedule, if needed) to discuss the event/presentation and to answer any questions you might have.

For any questions do reach out to us via Facebook or write an email to [email protected]

On Thursday, March 4th from 6:30 - 7:30 PM we are hosting a panel with a local girl guides group (38th Cambridge Brownies Girl Guides Division). We are looking for 3-4 volunteers who will be able to discuss their scientific path and current work for ~5 minutes with 10 minutes of questions from the G...

26/11/2020

A Man in STEM History

Ben Barres was born Barbara Barres in 1954, and from a young age, he was passionate about academics and especially science. He would reflect in the later years of his life that while sexism was widespread in the 1950s America, he was able to succeed because of his confidence, talent, and perseverance. Before the age of 40, Barres would earn a bachelors degree in biology from MIT, a medical degree from Dartmoth, and a doctorate from Harvard before taking a postdoctoral position at University College London (UCL). It was in the years following that he transitioned, and took a position in neurobiology at Stanford.

Before his death in 2017, Barres pioneered the study on glia, the cells that make up 90% of the human brain. His work led to the findings that these cells release chemicals that guide the formation of synaptic connections between neurons. However, he equally contributed to the fight against sexism in science, writing the Nature article ‘Does gender matter?’ in 2006 that debunks the idea that scientific ability is dependent on gender. He volunteered for selection committees as often as he could to improve representation of women in science, and he was always advocating for support of those with gender dysphoria.

“The comments about women’s lesser innate abilities are all wrongful and personal attacks on my character and capabilities, as well as on my colleagues’ and students’ abilities and self-esteem,” he is quoted in the Nature article. “…I will certainly not sit around and endure them.” While he passed away just three years ago from cancer, Barres legacy lives on in his book, The Autobiography of a Transgender Scientist.

10/11/2020

Join us tonight at 19:30 (GMT) for our first general member meeting! We will be discussing our plans for this term as well as upcoming events. Meeting notes (with Zoom link) can be found at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UpqSxPmmH2dHNt1UJ_tEJ5PeVKb4kImdiJC_mR6Qalk/edit?usp=sharing

See you then! 😃

Girls in STEM GENERAL BODY MEETING 10/11/20 10 NOVEMBER 2020 / 7:30 PM / ZOOM Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81428230995?pwd=RGxvZFExRmUvSXpSU25zdnBFS21RUT09 AGENDA Gates Engagement Event debrieza Afs Internal meetings and communication Working groups formation YouTube channel: Experime...

09/11/2020

A Woman in STEM History

Hedy Lamarr was born in 1913 in Vienna, Austria. Following success as an actress in Berlin, she was hired by MGM, and she would end up becoming a very famous film star of the 1930s in the United States. Marrying a German ammunitions manufacturer, Lamarr was made privy to the engineering world, something she would later call upon after divorcing her husband and fleeing Germany in 1937.

With the beginning of World War II, Lamarr collaborated with the musician George Antheil to apply for a patent on her idea of a “frequency hopping” device. By broadcasting seemingly random frequencies, a message could be sent with only the synchronized transmitter and receiver hearing the true signal while external sources would hear noise. They wanted to deploy this device in the fight against N**i Germany, but the National Inventors Council of the time was not interested in pursuing the idea.

However, in 1962, three years after the patent expired, the device was utilized in military communications systems on the US ships blockading Cuba. While Lamarr and Antheil never received any royalties from their idea, patents have referred to theirs as the basis of the field that they discovered. Today, frequency hopping is the basis behind anti-jamming softwares and wireless transmission.

Lamarr died in 2000 at the age of 86.

14/10/2020

OFFICER APPLICATIONS CLOSE TONIGHT!

Want to be more involved with Girls in STEM? Consider applying for an officer position! Deadline is tonight at 11:59 PM 🔬🧬🦠

13/10/2020

|||A Woman in STEM History|||

Patricia Bath was born in Harlem, New York in 1942 to a poor family. Despite the odds, she graduated from Howard University Medical School before interning at Columbia University and Harlem Hospital. She thus became the first African American woman to complete residency in ophthalmology. It was at the two institutions that she conducted an epidemiological study on the rates of blindness between white and black populations, finding it was twice as high in the latter population. It was this finding that led her to create the field of community ophthalmology for care of underserved populations, and she co-founded the American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness.

She became the first African American surgeon at the UCLA medical center and later the chair of its ophthalmology residency program. In 1988, she went on to create the Laserphaco Probe, a device to treat cataracts. It is safer, less invasive and more precise than the technology before it. She patented it in 1988 and became the first black female doctor to acquire a medical patent.

She went on to patent four more inventions, all of which fell in line with her humanitarian mission to ensure equal access to ophthalmology across the globe. Bath died in 2019 from complications with cancer, but her words live on: “Do not allow your mind to be imprisoned by majority thinking. Remember that the limits of science are not the limits of imagination.”

06/10/2020

🧬Join us for a live Q&A at the Fresher's Fair today and tomorrow!

🔬Learn how to get more involved and about some upcoming opportunities!

🦠 Link is in our bio!

30/09/2020

||| A Woman in STEM History |||

Maryam Mirzakhani was born in 1977 in Tehran, growing up during the intense Iran-Iraq war, but she never let the obstacles stop her. Incredibly creative from a young age, she dreamed of achieving greatness as a woman and travelling the world. At 17, she qualified for the Iranian Mathematical Olympiad team, and she won a gold medal with an almost perfect score. The following year, she won another after acing the test.

Mirzakhani attended Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, publishing multiple mathematics papers as an undergraduate. Following graduation for her B.S., she attended Harvard University where she studied mathematics under Curtis McMullen, a Fields Medal winner. Graduating in 2004, she joined Princeton University as a professor of Mathematics before later moving to Stanford University in 2008. It was here that she worked on a collaboration that made a “major breakthrough in understanding another dynamical system on moduli space that is related to the behaviour of geodesics in moduli space.” It was for this achievement that she was awarded a Fields Medal, the first and only woman to have won this award.

Tragically, Mirzakhani died in 2017 at the age of 40 from breast cancer. But, before her death, she shared a piece of wisdom that many in STEM would certainly agree with: “Doing research is challenging as well as attractive. It is like being lost in a jungle and trying to use all the knowledge that you can gather to come up with some new tricks, and with some luck you might find a way out."

23/09/2020

|||A Woman in STEM History|||

Born in 1951, Sally Ride was the first American woman and the first LGBT+ astronaut. She attended Stanford University where she received a Bachelors, Masters, and PhD in physics before applying to NASA.

Following extensive training, she traveled aboard the Challenger STS-7 as the flight engineer in 1983, at which point she became the youngest American, first American woman, and first LGBT+ astronaut in space. Prior to the trip, however, she was asked what makeup she would wear in space and how the lack of gravity might affect her ability to reproduce. She would later respond to these questions with, “It’s too bad this is such a big deal. It’s too bad our society isn’t further along.”

She spent more time in space in 1984 doing scientific investigations and intended to do a further mission until it was cancelled following the Challenger accident. She was on the presidential committee investigating this crash in 1986. Later in her career, she transferred to academia where she became a physicist and physics professor at the University of California, San Diego.

Posthumously, Sally Ride was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013 following her death from pancreatic cancer in 2012. Ride, throughout her career, advocated for the recruitment of women to STEM. She created Sally Ride Science with her partner to encourage youth from all backgrounds to pursue their interests in STEM.

Girls in STEM is working towards empowering STEM through inclusivity. As Sally Ride put it, “Young girls need to see role models in whatever careers they may choose, just so they can picture themselves doing those jobs someday. You can’t be what you can’t see.” And this goes beyond “girls” as disparities exist in STEM on the basis of race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation, among many others. Girls in STEM is working to increase the representation of all people and groups in these important fields so that all people may have an input in innovation. Join us today if you want to join us in our mission 🔬🦠🧬🧪🧫

10/09/2020

Applications are open!

🧬 Have a passion for outreach, or do you want to give back to the STEM community? Apply to be an officer in Girls in STEM!

🔬 We are looking for motivated individuals who want to make a change in our Cambridge community. From scientific officer to operations director, we have 14 open positions in our organization. All individuals are encouraged to apply!

🦠 Help us empower STEM through inclusivity by applying today 😀
https://forms.gle/5XQTFMcm2V1BZuubA

03/08/2020

As one of the twentieth century’s pre-eminent scientists, Franklin’s work has benefited all of humanity. The one-hundredth anniversary of her birth this month is prompting much reflection on her career and research contributions, not least Franklin’s catalytic role in unravelling the structure of DNA.

One hundred years after her birth, it’s time to reassess the legacy of a pioneering chemist and X-ray crystallographer.