Our summer newsletter brings you an update about MetroAWIS’ activities and a calendar of upcoming events that are of interest to women in science. Starting in this issue we will feature a profile of a woman scientist, written by Fleur Francois, a new member of MetroAWIS' executive board.
Congratulations to Tina Lopingco, Ph.D. who was elected the new president of MetroAWIS this year. Tina works with the New York Biotechnology Association.
SAVE THESE DATES!
June 22: Biotechnology: Career of the Future, 10 AM to noon at Hunter College.
Nov 14: Annual Outstanding Woman Scientists Award Ceremony, 6 PM at the New York Academy of Sciences.
REQUEST FOR EMAIL ADDRESSES
We want to keep you up-to-date. Please send your email address to Dr. Nancy Tooney at ntooney@poly.edu
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JOIN THE AWIS REGISTRY
AWIS provides the opportunity to network for career advancement and to voice the issues facing women scientists with employers and policymakers. Join the national AWIS registry - a unique database of women scientists that serves as a resource. Register by calling 202-326 8940 or at web: http://www.awis.org
Celebration of Women's History Month
By Nancy M. Tooney, Ph.D.
Polytechnic University
On Thursday March 14th, Metro NY AWIS and the Metrowomen Chemists Topical Group of the New York and North Jersey Sections of the American Chemical Society co-sponsored the annual "Celebration of Women’s History Month."
This event was hosted by the Section of Women in Science of the New York Academy of Sciences at the Academy and was attended by an overflow crowd of 90. This year we recognized the contributions of Dr. Lila R. Gleitman, (Institute of Cognitive Research, U of Penn), a leader in the development of linguistics, language acquisition and linguistically informed theoretical cognitive science, and Madeleine Jacobs, Editor of C&E News and an ardent supporter of chemists and the chemical sciences. Jacobs outlined her career path, focusing especially on her tenure at C&E News.
Renee Fox's Presentation: Doctors Without Borders
Renée Fox, currently Annenberg Professor Emerita of the Social Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania, presented her research on Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders) on Thursday April 11th at the New York Academy of Sciences. The seminar was hosted by the Section of Women in Science of NYAS and co-sponsored by Metro NY AWIS. Dr Fox's major teaching and research interests -sociology of medicine, medical research, medical education, and medical ethics - have involved her in first-hand, participant observation - based studies in Europe, Central Africa, and the People's Republic of China, as well as the United States. For over 30 years Médecins sans Frontières has aided women and men in some of the most devastated areas of the world, including Afghanistan. Dr. Fox described the organization's humanitarian and witnessing actions, the practical and moral dilemmas presented by the changing international context, and the challenges to the key principles and values of this organization.
Metrowomen Chemists 25th Anniversary Celebration
This year is the 75th anniversary of the national Women Chemists Committee and C&E News editor Madeleine Jacobs is running feature articles on one "rising star" woman chemist each month during 2002. The articles have described why their work is likely to make a significant impact on chemistry in this century.
The Metrowomen chemists joint topical group of the North Jersey and New York Sections of the American Chemical Society (MWCC) held a special 25 year anniversary dinner featuring three of the "rising star" women chemists highlighted in C&E News during 2002. A group of about 40 women scientists met at Toscana Ristorante in NJ for dinner and to hear Zhenan Bao, Lucent Technologies; Wendy Cornell, Novartis Pharmaceuticals; and Ann E. Weber, Merck Research Laboratories describe their careers and their scientific research.
This column marks the first installment in a series highlighting successful women scientists in the New York metropolitan area.
Gwendalyn Randolph’s career advice to others is to “do something you like and be inspired by it”. An undergraduate pre-med course in histology at Temple University, Philadelphia awakened an interest in the exquisite complexity of the immune system for this Mt Sinai Assistant Professor. Dr. Randolph grew up on a farm in Texas with no previous exposure to science as a potential career. However, a book given to her by a histology professor describing the mechanisms of inflammation was the starting point for a career studying fate determination and trafficking within the human immune system. As a graduate student at SUNY, Stony Brook she originally studied monocytes with the aim of setting up a model for atherosclerosis. At graduate school, the concept of being a woman scientist was never an issue for Gwendalyn because half the faculty were women and were represented at all academic levels. Her graduate research led to the key observation that some of the monocytes traffic out of the tissue and she hypothesized that this has major implications for tissue homeostasis. With this observation in hand, she took the project to Rockefeller University where she worked as a post-doctoral fellow with Bill Muller, an investigator interested in CD31, a molecule Gwendalyn thought was involved in this process. It turned out that CD31 was not involved, but a collaboration with Ralph Steinman and her own fellowship from the National Heart Blood and Lung Institute allowed her a great deal of independence to pursue her own interests as a post-doc. At this point Gwendalyn was strongly advised to change fields from her graduate work and learn some molecular biology, she ignored this advice in favor of pursuing her major interest. This choice seems to have given her an edge over some molecular biologists without cell biology or physiology training.
In 2000, Dr. Randolph was recruited to the Institute of Gene Therapy and Molecular Medicine at Mt Sinai School of Medicine. In her current position as a young female faculty member she observes that being a women scientist can be an advantage in forging collaborations because she is perceived as less intimidating or competitive than her male peers. The focus of her current research is to develop better systems to understand and accurately mimic the complexity of monocyte differentiation and trafficking. She believes this will prove critical to the understanding of infectious and inflammatory diseases and the development of more sophisticated vaccines and may yield insight into mechanisms of cell migration during tumor metastasis. Dr. Randolph has already contributed much to the field of immune cell migration with publications in Cell, Science and PNAS and has been recognized with grants and awards from the Cancer Research Institute, American Heart Association and National Institutes of Health.
Biographies of scientists and the stories behind scientific discoveries such as the cloning of insulin inspire Dr. Randolph. She recommends “A Commotion in the Blood” by Stephen S. Hall and a series of essays by James D. Watson entitled “A Passion for DNA, Genes, Genomes & Society”. During her time off you can find her rock climbing either indoors on the wall at Chelsea Piers or outside in the beautiful Rocky Mountains. Asked how long she will stay in science, Gwendalyn replies, “as long as it inspires me and I look forward to going to work” otherwise she jokes that she’ll move back to the farm in Texas.
Physiology Ph.D.’s Talk About Careers at FASEB
By Kathleen A. Nolan, Ph.D.
St. Francis College, Brooklyn, NY
At the FASEB meeting in New Orleans in April, 2002, four physiologists talked about their careers. Elaine K. Gallin, Ph.D. is the Program Director for Medical Research for the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. This $1.6 billion-endowed foundation funds environmental and medical research, performing arts and children’s issues. Clinical research on AIDS, cancer, blood and cardiovascular diseases are priorities. Elaine is a consultant who determines whether grant proposals should be funded. She gave us some background about foundations and mentioned that recent statistics show that funding for biomedical research is a 21 billion dollar industry. The NIH contributes 13 billion, and non-profits contribute 1.3 billion, which, is only about seven percent of the total, but is still substantial. Each foundation has a particular focus—for example, the Carnegie Foundation funds biomedical education, the Rockefeller Foundation funds research on global health issues, and the Gates Foundation funds international research. Foundations can be large, such as those just listed, or small and focused such as the Hartford Foundation that focuses on biomedical research on aging, or Ellison, which has a global focus on infectious diseases.
Public-private partnerships exist for of such projects as developing an AIDS vaccine initiative, or attempting to eradicate TB. These foundations hire many scientists to plan and manage projects. Elaine had completed her Ph.D. in Biology and a postdoc in Physiology and had worked for 22 years as a patch-clamp physiologist. She wondered what life was like outside of the lab, became a Congressional Fellow and adopted a more global view of science. She became a researcher manager for the Department of Energy and negotiated grant agreements. Her present position. is a varied and interesting job, in which her training as a physiologist is constantly tapped.
Kawanza L. Griffin, Ph.D. is a medical reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. She fell in love with a newsroom during a summer internship, and it was natural to go into newspaper reporting. She went to school at Xavier and the University of Missouri in Columbia. After obtaining her Ph.D. in physiology, she received an AAAS Media fellowship for three months in Milwaukee, but stayed an extra year. When the medical reporter retired at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, she got that job. She feels that scientists make the best science reporters but some start out on the cop-beat, and work their way up.
Kawanza suggests that the following characteristics are necessary for being a reporter: a) love of writing, b) natural curiosity, c) being prepared and doing the background research, d) persistence in the face of name-calling, e) a healthy skepticism, f) an ability to break down complicated ideas into understandable, digestible chunks (most newspaper readers are at an eighth grade reading level, and a Ph.D. degree helps you to be concise and better explain things) and g) building up a trust and not violating embargoes. Embargoes are edicts by professional journals that ask popular-press journalists who have been given pre-publication information not to reveal stories about medical breakthroughs until the journal is published. (However, many journalists break such embargoes.) Newspapers need more writers than the television industry, making the former medium easier to break into. It is much harder to begin a job in medical writing by working for the more lucrative pharmaceuticals, but newspaper medical and science reporter jobs are in "high demand".
Christine G. Schnackenberg, Ph.D. obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Mississippi Medical Center. She became a research instructor in Physiology and Biophysics and did her postdoc in hypertension and renal failure. She is currently working as a research investigator at Glaxo Smith Kline Pharmaceuticals. She is involved in drug discovery and assesses soil fungi for drugs. The company is especially interested in developing drugs against high blood pressure, diabetes and kidney disease. Much of this research involves high throughput imaging, animal research and product support.
Christine outlined various jobs a scientist could obtain in a pharmaceutical company. One type is in safety assessment; this involves studying the toxico-kinetics of the drugs using animal models. Non-lab positions can be found in sales, which requires travel and social skills. Clinical research associates work with patients in studies of the effects of medications. A combination of business and science degrees would be useful if one wishes to work for a pharmaceutical company. There are many pros to working in pharmaceuticals: a) application to human disease, b) higher salaries, c) up-to-date working equipment, d) a diversity of colleagues, e) good long-term benefits, f) availability of continuing education, and g) ability to move into management. The cons are: a) the company is subject to market forces, b) the company has certain research goals that may not exactly match your interests, c) there is a lot of multitasking---you could be working on more than one project at once, d) the company cannot afford to wait if a project isn’t working out financially or otherwise--you will be switched to a different project and e) you will be required to meet deadlines.
David G. L. Van Wylen, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Biology at St. Olaf College. He cited as positives to his job a) flexibility and autonomy, b) noble profession, c) unpredictability, d) collegiality, e) sabbaticals, and f) security with tenure. David described several types of academic situation: a) a large research program in a major university with an emphasis on graduate students and postdocs, i.e. less emphasis on teaching, b) a regional university with a larger focus on undergraduate student, c) a research-active college with a strong liberal arts program and focus on undergraduate research. To work at such a place, one should have a passion for teaching and be willing to seek outside funding opportunities. d) Four or two year colleges that have excellent teaching opportunities but little support for research. Several NSF and NIH programs fund undergraduate education.
Salaries at foundations start in the mid 50K, and can rise to more than 100K. At smaller newspapers you start at 25-30K, at large papers at 60-65K. Teaching salaries start from 30-48K, depending on the type of college or university.
The speakers were bright and filled with enthusiasm about their work; they made us feel hopeful. Only about one percent of Ph.D.’s are unemployed, which is much better than the five percent national average!
WOMEN REVEAL STORIES AT NETWORKING DINNER
By Kathleen A. Nolan, Ph.D.
About thirty women attended the third annual networking dinner sponsored by the NYAS Women’s Section on February 5, 2002. They offered details about their methods for surmounting challenges and dealing with frustrations in their careers.
Margaret Perkins, a Ph.D. who did research on malarial and other parasities for years, has retooled with a Masters degree in Public Health. She is enjoying her current job in public health, which, coincidentally, pays better than her previous research position. She says there are many opportunities in public health, and is promoting it as a viable career option.
Cheryl Agris with a Ph.D. in cell biology worked as a patent attorney in a law firm. She has since forged a new path as an owner of her own patent-attorney consulting business. She enjoys the flexibility of her business, especially since it allows her time for her young son.
Kathy Nolan noted that one of her chief obstacles in her earlier job hunt was trying to hide the fact that she had two young children. Often, interviewers will ask you if you have children, or the more savvy ones, who know that this is illegal, will ask questions such as “Why did it take you eight years to get your Ph.D.?” One academic who interviewed her actually mentioned that their college was “burned” by hiring a woman who was pregnant! Kathy reminded the younger members of the group that money is still the bottom line in most business, so prospective employers only want to know that you can do the job.
Various solutions and questions surfaced after the introductory speakers’comments. One suggestion was to tell prospective employers that you have a support system at home to care for the children if they are sick. Another single woman felt scrutinized during job interviews----that employers wanted to know if and when she planned to start a family. Although these stories reveal alternatives to traditional academic careers, there is still hesitation about employing women with families.
SEEKING NOMINATIONS FOR 24th ANNUAL AWARDS CEREMONY TO HONOR OUTSTANDING WOMEN SCIENTISTS
TO BE HELD on November 14, 2002 at New York Academy of Sciences, 2 East 63rd Street, New York.
We are looking for women in the greater metropolitan New York area who have made significant contributions in their field and have also encouraged and promoted women in the sciences.
Please send your nomination with a curriculum vitae and one to two page letter of nomination by August. 20, 2002 to METRO AWIS Secretary, Dr. Nancy Tooney. The letter of nomination must also note contributions, support, and promotion of women in the sciences. Previous nominations will automatically be reentered and submitted to the selection committee.
Metro-AWIS Secretary:
Dr. Nancy Tooney
Polytechnic University
6, Metrotech Center
Brooklyn, NY 11201
ntooney@poly.edu
Nominee: ______________________________________________________
Name of nominator: ______________________________________________________
If you would like to join the Board or recommend someone who might be interested, please contact Dr. Nancy Tooney at ntooney@poly.edu or nmt02@worldnet.att.net |
