Applications are open for AWIS scholarships, and they have even more to give this year! They'll award up to 13 scholarships for WomenInScience who are pre-doctoral students, women re-entering the workforce, and undergraduate students. You can apply by February 28.

“The job that pays me,” Jessica Wade told VICE, smiling, “is that of a material scientist who works on new material technology for a more sustainable future.” So, what’s the non-paying job for the 34-year-old British scientist who works as a research fellow in the Department of Materials at the Imperial College in London? Since 2017, it’s been writing a Wikipedia entry every day, sometimes even two, to highlight the achievements of women scientists whose contributions to the world have either gone unnoticed or remain largely unacknowledged, no thanks to the systemic racial bias in Wikipedia’s coverage as well as that of mainstream media. Wade had been thinking of “equity and representation in science” for a really long time, which is what led her to undertake what would later become an increasingly ambitious project. Having completed both her undergrad and PhD courses in physics, Wade was mindful to the extent her field of study remains largely accessible to people from more privileged socio-economic backgrounds. It’s also a field that is largely dominated by white men.

Kelsey Byers outlines some of the things disabled scientists should look out when they are looking to move labs, both at home and abroad. Byers, an evolutionary chemical ecologist who was diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome in her 20s and is now a group leader at the John Innes Institute, a plant and microbial research institute in Norwich, UK, also offers advice on how to talk about disability to potential employers. She is joined by Logan Gin, a STEM education researcher at Brown University in Providence. Gin, who has diastrophic dysplasia dwarfism, describes how his research is helping to identify solutions to support students with disabilities.

Like graphing data, choosing controls, or mixing clear solutions - public speaking is a skill any scientist can learn. Public speaking skills are developed over time with practice and experience. Dr. Joanne Kamens offers fundamentals for preparing and delivering a public talk that will keep the audience awake and interested.

When women refuse requests to do unrewarded tasks, another female colleague often gets asked instead. In August 2022, a group of female scholars wrote ‘Why four scientists spent a year saying no’: an article about what they had gained by saying no to 100 work-related requests over the course of year. They knew we had found kindred spirits in the authors. They, too, have lost time by saying yes to work that didn’t move their careers forward. That led four female professors, to form the No Club. Over the past decade, they have researched work that doesn’t help to advance careers - an attempt to understand why they, along with many others, were doing so much of it. They gave this work a name: non-promotable tasks (NPTs). Although this work matters to an organization, it brings no external reward or recognition to the individual who does it.

There’s a test that they at Lost Women of Science seem to fail again and again: the Finkbeiner test. Named for science writer, Ann Finkbeiner, the Finkbeiner test is a checklist for writing profiles of female scientists without being sexist. It includes rules such as not mentioning her husband’s job or her childcare arrangements or how she was the “first woman to ...” - all rules we break regularly on this show. In this episode, Katie Hafner talks to Christie Aschwanden, the science writer who created the test, and Ann Finkbeiner, who inspired it, to find out how they came up with these rules and to see if there might be hope yet for our series. Hafner reports her findings to Carol Sutton Lewis, who has a whole other set of rules for telling these stories.

This 13-year-old shows girls how to chase their dreams at any age. It’s not every day you get to start your STEM journey at NASA. For Alena Analeigh McQuarter, her journey into the field of science was far beyond a few textbooks and planetarium trips. The 13-year-old went every summer to NASA and even interned at the space program before she went to college. Yes, college.The Fort Worth, Texas native is currently a college student at Arizona State University and Oakwood University. With an early start to her collegiate career, she holds the title of the youngest African American to get accepted into medical school at 13. In addition to being a teen prodigy, the STEM princess herself was featured as a speaker for Yahoo’s The MAKERS Conference in Dana Point, California, where she will be discussing how she is re-writing the future and helping to pave the way for young girls of color.

It’s no secret that Proximus attaches great importance to diversity at the workplace for many years now. As a company, they believe it’s important to keep this embedded in our culture as we strongly believe women will truly blossom if they are part of an inclusive work environment. And they make the difference every day. They lay the foundations for all our products & services and thereby deliver an essential contribution to the digitalization of Proximus & its customers on the residential & professional market. Smart cities, 5G, cloud computing. There are no limits to what you can achieve. If you see endless possibilities in the most complex technologies and want to make the most of all your IT skills, then you can join this exclusive event and ask all your questions to their team (including Proximus Digital & IT lead) & discover how you could shape the future of digital.

We are experiencing unprecedented levels of stress, exhaustion, and burnout. And we've all bought into the story that we need to choose between meaningful success and our well-being. But as Nataly Kogan will talk about in this Fireside Chat, we must change this mindset and recognize that cultivating our well-being is not a soft skill – it's non-negotiable if we want to do the work we love sustainably.

The Association for Women in Science (AWIS) is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2022 AWIS Annual Awards, which recognize their career achievements, strong leadership skills, innovative thinking, and commitment to inclusivity, diversity, equity, and accessibility of AWIS members. To ensure access, equity, and inclusivity, the awards nomination process is open to all, and nominations are accepted from both AWIS members and the general public. This year, AWIS received a number of exceptionally qualified nominations for scientists in fields from artificial intelligence to genomic characterization highlighting DEI activities ranging from revising institutional code of ethics and member conduct documents to developing interactive workshops for colleagues recognizing unconscious bias and starting an introspective journey. “Recognizing the achievements of women scientists is an integral part of the AWIS mission,” said Meredith Gibson, AWIS CEO.