After a 20-year career as a mathematics professor, teaching at the college level and doing research in nonlinear integral equations and natural resource modeling, she became the Executive Director of the American Mathematical Society, which is the professional society for research mathematicians. This Fall, she will begin a new role as CEO of the Consortium for Mathematics and Its Applications.

What is it about robots? Whether it’s the appeal of new technology, seeing science fiction become science fact, or exploring what they might be able to teach us about ourselves, robots and robotics seem to have an endless capacity to fire our imagination. For Dr Micol Spitale, Nida Itrat Abbasi, and Minja Axelsson, researchers in Cambridge’s Affective Intelligence and Robotics Laboratory – directed by Professor Hatice Gunes - it’s the potential they have to help foster wellbeing in humans. A recent study led by Dr Spitale, and co-authored by PhD student Minja, showed that robots could be useful as mental wellbeing coaches in the workplace, although perception of their effectiveness depends on what they look like. And separate research by PhD student Nida, and co-authored by Dr Spitale, suggested robots are potentially a promising tool in evaluating mental wellbeing issues in children, compared to parent-reported or self-reported testing.

The mission of the American Water Resources Association (AWRA) is to work toward solving water resources challenges in a collaborative, multidisciplinary way that brings together stakeholders from the public and private sectors, including representatives from government, business, academia, and the nonprofit world.
AWRA has spent almost 60 years bringing together scientists, researchers, academics, and a variety of stakeholders from the private and public sectors to solve critical water issues in the United States and abroad. At our meetings and gatherings, you will not be surprised to find an engineer, a hydrologist, a public health scientist, a sociologist, a policy analyst, a land planner, and community advocates working together: we believe that this is how we will resolve water resources challenges, and, in fact, that we will find solutions to these issues by providing a forum for information exchange, professional development, and education. This multidisciplinary emphasis has drawn membership from a wide variety of water-related disciplines in academia, government, and private industry and has allowed AWRA programs to rapidly adapt to emerging issues, changes in technology, and the shifting needs of our members. The driver of change for much of our work is created through AWRA’s Technical Committees, which together serve as a national, organized body of professionals who work to highlight the emerging obstacles and opportunities happening in the water resources community.

If you haven’t read this year’s bestseller Lessons In Chemistry, you’re missing out. Clever, funny and powerful, it follows the story of a single mother in the Sixties battling the patriarchy as she fights to make her way in the world of science. Abiogenesis specifically, aka the origin of life. Thankfully that was a different era, but despite recent progress, women are still underrepresented across STEM industries – science, technology, engineering and mathematics. According to the For Women in Science programme, a partnership between the Foundation L’Oreal and Unesco, women make up only a third of researchers worldwide, and less than 4% of Nobel prizes have been awarded to women. In a bid to change that, the programme supports hundreds of young female researchers every year – and also highlights five scientists from around the world working on ground-breaking and vital research, awarding them the honour of International Laureate. ‘In the time of a generation, the For Women in Science programme has contributed to creating a real transformation by raising the profile of women representing every continent and breaking new ground in all disciplines,’ said Alexandra Palt, executive director of the Fondation L’Oréal. ‘However, while we are conscious of the progress we have made, we remain determined, as the task remains significant. The presence of women in science and particularly in senior positions is still too low due to the gender inequality and discrimination they still have to face.

Representation, community, and equity: this is how we’re changing the face of tech. Watch Dr. Tarika Barrett speak about closing the gender gap in tech on PIX11 News.

When Ambika Kamath was a graduate student in evolutionary biology at Harvard University, she knew one thing for sure: She wasn’t going to research anoles, the lizards that her adviser, Jonathan Losos, specialized in. Losos encouraged her to work with anoles after all, because it was well established that males hold individual territories that they protect from other males, and females only mate with the male whose territory they reside in. That would make it more straightforward for Kamath to study how anole territoriality differed across habitat types, like forests and parks. So Kamath went to Florida, where she identified individual anoles and tracked their movements day in, day out. Kamath studied the anoles “in a larger area, in a longer period of time than anyone else had ever done,” says Losos, who is now at Washington University in St. Louis. But instead of revealing territorial differences, this massive dataset showed that the anoles weren’t actually territorial in the first place. Kamath looked into the historical record to see where the idea of anole territoriality originated. It started with a 1933 paper that described frequent sexual behavior between male lizards in the lab. The authors had concluded that this lab behavior must be “prevented by something” in the wild, Kamath says, which they inferred was the males protecting territories. “The very first conclusion,” she says, “was based on a homophobic response to observing male-male copulation.” That shaky conclusion caught on, and later researchers assumed it to be true.

Honoring the gay and trans folks that participated in the Stonewall Riots of 1969, June Pride is a celebration of the diverse identities that make up the LGBTQ+ community. While we may honor Pride in June, nature is celebrating all the time - as science increasingly shows, the natural world is a nonstop riot of identities, fluidity and adaptation, with diverse relationships we are only beginning to understand. For many LGBTQ scientists, the diversity and resiliency of the world they study provides inspiration all year long; it’s even prompted the growth of an emerging field, queer ecology. But the reality of being a queer scientist is not always easy. A 2018 study showed that LGBTQ students are more likely to drop out of STEM career pathways than their straight peers. LGBTQ professionals in STEM are also 30 percent more likely to experience workplace harassment compared with their non-LGBTQ peers. What is it like to be an LGBTQ scientist, studying our natural world? Read the students and alumni across UC answers about their experiences, the challenges they face, and the unique perspective being LGBTQ brings to their work.

If Chantal Navratil had listened to everyone who told her she didn’t seem like an engineer or was too young to start her own business, she wouldn’t have founded Chem Baddie Cosmetics. Read more about how she gives back to women in STEM and celebrates the beauty in science.

Females are appsolutely wired to know what platforms will land with an audience. And according to research, nearly 85% of all purchases are female-led - so why aren’t they at the helm of bringing more apps into reality? Read the blog naming our top 10 female-founded apps and their stories on how they got there.

Dr. Kalpana Chawla was the first Indian woman in space. Born in India, she immigrated to the United States after earning her degree in aeronautical engineering. In the 1980s, she became a naturalized citizen and obtained her masters and doctoral degrees in aerospace engineering. In 1994, NASA selected her as an astronaut candidate. Her first flight was in 1997 on the space shuttle Columbia, where she performed a spacewalk to recapture a Spartan satellite. Her second flight was in 2003 on Columbia, but when the shuttle re-entered Earth’s orbit for landing, part of the shuttle’s insulation broke off. This damaged the thermal protection system, causing hot gas to enter the wing and depressurizing the shuttle. All seven crew members died in the tragic accident. The crew’s legacy has been honored through documentaries and investigations to prevent future accidents. In 2010, the University of Texas dedicated a memorial to Chawla at the Arlington College of Engineering.