YSM Issue 93.3_Old

Yale Scientific

THE NATION’S OLDEST COLLEGE SCIENCE PUBLICATION • ESTABLISHED IN 1894

NOVEMBER 2020 VOL. 93 NO. 3 • $6.99

5

ADVICE

TO

WOMEN

IN STEM

12

NOT-SO-

DARK

MATTER?

28

HEE OH:

COMING

FULL

CIRCLE

T A B L E O F

VOL. 93 ISSUE NO. 3

More articles online at www.yalescientific.org & https://medium.com/the-scope-yale-scientific-magazines-online-blog

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Not-So-Dark Matter?

Christopher Poston

Earth’s Evolution through Eons

Cindy Kuang & Jerry Ruvalcaba

The Duality of Sex Differences

Catherine Zheng & Raquel Sequeira

The All-Female Flannery Lab

Beatriz Horta & Mahnoor Sarfraz

Coming Full Circle

Mirilla Zhu

How We Got Here and Where We Are Going

Eamon Goucher & Alexandra Haslund-Gourley

Building Polymers and Building Community

Jenny Tan & Rayyan Darji

A Doctor Who Writes

Dhruv Patel & Matthew Fan

2 Yale Scientific Magazine November 2020 www.yalescientific.org

C O N T E N T S

5

8

ADVICE TO

WOMEN IN

STEM

SHORTS

Mariel Pettee • Madison Houck & Victoria Vera

Laura Niklason • Tiffany Liao

Ashley Schloss & Jennette Creso • Meili Gupta

Tamar Geller & Taylor Chapman • Raj Pandya

Barbara Ehrlich, Forging Her Own Path • Veronica Lee

Why Representation Matters • Alexa Jeanna Loste

Men and Women are Physiological Unequal • Sophia Zhuang

Major Depressive Disorders are Underreported and Prone to Recall Error •

Anjali Mangla & Victoria Ouyang

22 SPECIALS

38

46

51

FEATURES

SHEA

LETTER

A Timeline of Firsts • Cynthia Lin

Women in STEM Whose Discoveries We Use Every Day •

Arushi Dogra & Cathleen Liang

By the Numbers • Ishani Singh

Life in Motion • Lucas Loman & Agastya Rana

Adding the “A” to STEAM • Kelly Chen & Hannah Huang

Paving the Way for More Inclusive Science Storytelling •

Alex Dong & Angelica Lorenzo

Academia Within an Ending Universe • Brianna Fernandez

Thinking Space • Britt Bistis

“OkZoomer” Platform Connects Isolated College Students • Clay Thames

What Is Meant for Us? • Leleda Beraki

Rocking the Boat • Athena Stenor

“This is What a Scientist Looks Like” • Gonna Nwakudu

What still needs to be done to improve gender equity and inclusion

in STEM? • YSM Masthead

www.yalescientific.org

November 2020 Yale Scientific Magazine 3

The Editor-in-Chief Speaks

In conjunction with the campus-wide 50WomenAtYale150 celebrations,

this special issue of the YSM celebrates the accomplishments of women

in STEM, both at Yale and beyond. This magazine issue has been a long

time in the planning—the editorial board and YSM members spent the

summer brainstorming about what type of content to feature, how best to

structure this issue, and, perhaps most importantly, who to feature. From

planning to execution, this project has presented unique challenges that

every member of the team has met with zeal, even amidst the uncertain

circumstances for academic life and, by extension, for YSM operations.

From the start, we wanted to infuse our coverage with as much variety

as possible, be it in STEM disciplines, the backgrounds of women featured,

or the nature of the content. What you will see in the following pages are

creative efforts by our editors, writers, and artists—many of whom are

women in STEM—to step outside the conventional YSM structure and

provide a fitting celebration of incredible achievements by women in STEM.

Our “Shorts” section comprises four pieces of advice to women in STEM,

written by women in various stages of their careers. Four short research pieces

thereafter serve to highlight recent scientific advances led by women. The

“Focus” section comprises five in-depth profiles of women leaders in academia

and industry, as well as three articles on cutting-edge, women-led research at

Yale. We hope that telling the stories of women who have succeeded will be

both inspirational and instructive, viz. the challenges and pervasive biases that

they were required to overcome at every step of the way. Our “Features” section

spotlights both women outside Yale and women who have blazed their own trail

in pursuing unconventional STEM careers. Peppered throughout the magazine

are the Special Sections that cover the history of women in STEM. Also in these

Sections is an incredible collection of pieces written in partnership with the

STEM and Health Equity Advocates at Yale that address the unique challenges

faced by underrepresented minority women in STEM.

As much as this is a celebration, it will hopefully be apparent that much more

needs to be done at every level before true equality is achieved. On p. 51, our

editorial board details our perspective on the current and future states of women

in STEM. Finally, there is so much more to be celebrated and said about women

in STEM than we could fit in this issue; even so, we hope you will find inspiration

and insight to work towards a more inclusive and equal playing field in STEM.

Marcus Sak, Editor-in-Chief

ABOUT THE ART

While the presence of women in

STEM has been historically low,

insitutitons and individuals are

currently undertaking efforts to

steadily bridge the gender divide. In

this issue’s cover, we celebrate just a

sliver of our female contemporaries in

academia, industry, and medicine—

our relentless trailblazers who

harness their crafts to both improve

and inspire future generations.

Sophia Zhao, Cover Artist

MASTHEAD

November 2020 VOL. 93 NO. 3

EDITORIAL BOARD

Editor-in-Chief

Managing Editors

News Editor

Features Editor

Articles Editor

Online Editors

Copy Editors

Scope Editors

PRODUCTION & DESIGN

Production Manager

Layout Editor

Art Editor

Cover Artist

Photography Editor

Webmasters

Social Media Coordinator

BUSINESS

Publisher

Operations Manager

Advertising Managers

OUTREACH

Synapse Presidents

Synapse Vice President

Outreach Coordinator

STAFF

Ismihan Abdelkadir

Leleda Beraki

Britt Bistis

Kelly Chen

Rayyan Darji

Arushi Dogra

Alex Dong

Matthew Fan

Brianna Fernandez

Meili Gupta

Eamon Goucher

Alexandra Haslund-Gourley

Beatriz Horta

Madison Houck

Hannah Huang

ADVISORY BOARD

Priyamvada Natarajan

Sandy Chang

Kurt Zilm, Chair

Fred Volkmar

Stanley Eisenstat

James Duncan

Stephen Stearns

Jakub Szefer

Werner Wolf

John Wettlaufer

William Summers

Scott Strobel

Robert Bazell

Craig Crews

Ayaska Fernando

Robert Cordova

Doyoung Jeong

Cindy Kuang

Veronica Lee

Cathleen Liang

Tiffany Liao

Cynthia Lin

Anmei Little

Lucas Loman

Angelica Lorenzo

Alexa Jeanne Loste

Angali Mangla

Gonna Nwakudu

Victoria Ouyang

Raj Pandya

Christopher R. Poston

Marcus Sak

Kelly Farley

Anna Sun

Xiaoying Zheng

Hannah Ro

James Han

Tiffany Liao

Maria Fernanda Pacheco

Nithyashri Baskaran

Serena Thaw-Poon

Lorenzo Arvanitis

Brett Jennings

Antalique Tran

Julia Zheng

Ellie Gabriel

Sophia Zhao

Kate Kelly

Siena Cizdziel

Matt Tu

Megan He

Sebastian Tsai

Jenny Tan

Stephanie Hu

Cynthia Lin

Michelle Barsukov

Katherine Dai

Chelsea Wang

Blake Bridge

Agastya Rana

Jerry Ruvalcaba

Mahnoor Sarfraz

Sydney Scott

Raquel Sequira

Ishani Singh

Athena Stenor

Clay Thames

Isabel Trindade

Victoria Vera

Sherry Wang

Sherry Xu

Catherine Zheng

Mirilla Zhu

Sophia Zhuang

Astronomy

Biological and Biomedical Sciences

Chemistry

Child Study Center

Computer Science

Diagnostic Radiology

Ecology & Evolutionary Biology

Electrical Engineering

Emeritus

Geology & Geophysics

History of Science, Medicine, & Public Health

Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry

Molecular, Cellular, & Developmental Biology

Molecular, Cellular, & Developmental Biology

Undergraduate Admissions

Yale Science & Engineering Association

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Advice

SHORT

ADVICE TO

WOMEN IN STEM

MARIEL PETTEE never decided to be one

thing or another. As someone who was

enthusiastic about both the sciences and

the arts, Pettee assumed that a time would

come when one of her passions would have

to speak louder than the other. “I [thought]

that when I got to college,” she said, “maybe

one of [my] two interests would reveal itself

to be more important in my life. I think

instead I just found that I was able to charge

ahead and do both as much as I wanted

to.” And so, she did. As a physics graduate

student at Yale, Pettee finds the time to

simultaneously research the Higgs boson

particle and choreograph a musical about

Elon Musk and the colonization of Mars.

The Higgs boson—the object of

Pettee’s research—is part of a much

larger explanation of why particles have

mass. The discovery of the particle at

the European Organization for Nuclear

Research, or CERN, was the final piece

in the puzzle of the Standard Model of

Particle Physics: a theory developed in

the 1960s to describe the fundamental

forces and elementary particles in our

universe. However, according to Pettee, the

Standard Model is not a complete theory. It

does not consider gravity and comes into

conflict with other evidence, unearthed by

astronomers, surrounding dark matter and

dark energy. Using data from the CERN’s

Large Hadron Collider—the biggest and

most potent particle accelerator in the

world—Pettee explores this obscure area

of particle physics. As Pettee observes how

the Higgs boson behaves, she is looking for

MARIEL PETTEE

BY MADISON HOUCK & VICTORIA VERA

something that would differ from Standard

Model predictions. Any deviation would

give physicists something new to investigate

to expand the Standard Model or even to

create a new, more comprehensive theory

for particle behavior, Pettee explained.

When she’s not working at the forefront

of particle physics research, Pettee finds

outlets to combine her passions for physics

and dance through artificial intelligence.

What was born from a place of curiosity, she

said, just “wanting to see what AI would do

if [I] trained it to generate dance,” has now

evolved into much more complex work. She

now collaborates with scientists, artists, and

dancers, leading an independent team that

investigates the analysis and generation

of choreography by AI. The intersection

between artificial intelligence and the arts

has “opened up a whole new avenue of

research,” which Pettee finds exciting.

Her love of performance isn’t only

reflected in her research, but also in

many independent projects. During

her undergraduate years, Pettee was in

rehearsals from six to ten p.m., only to

leave afterwards to work on her problem

sets deep into the night. Mariel’s passion

for the arts seeps through her experiences

as a teacher. When she spoke about her

lessons, she said that she tries to “connect

with [her] students sort of like if [she]

was connecting to an audience.” For her,

it was through teaching that the overlap

between science and the performing

arts first became clear, and from there

on, these two areas became one for her.

From focusing her side projects at the

intersection of artificial intelligence

and dance to choreographing the latest

Elon Musk-related musicals at the Yale

Cabaret, Mariel has shown us all that the

chasm between the arts and science can,

in fact, be bridged.

Mariel’s passion for performance led

her to participate in different outreach

programs throughout her career. She fondly

remembered a physics slam—Windy City

Physics Slam—in which physicists from all

over the world gave ten-minute talks about

their research in whatever format they

desired. These enthusiastic presentations

were promptly followed by kids running

around the stage, excited by the enthralling

complexity of particle physics. She noted

that these events turned into spaces for

audiences—both young and old—to ask

playful questions about topics that would

have otherwise been inaccessible to them.

Mariel Pettee has led an awe-inspiring

life in more ways than one. But even more

admirable than her cutting-edge research

and performances is her warm personality,

which shines through her words and

work. Pettee underscores the importance

of not second-guessing yourself and

asking for help when necessary. In her

own words, “Don’t count yourself out.”

For many, following aspirations in the

sciences can seem like a far-away dream.

But every day, women like Pettee show

that it is possible, and that one doesn’t

necessarily have to put other passions to

the side in order to do so. ■



SHORT

Advice

DR. LAURA NIKLASON is a world-renowned

professor at Yale who studies vascular and

lung engineering. She is a recent inductee

of the National Academy of Engineering,

and the founder of her own biotech startup

Humacyte. Among many accolades, Time

Magazine named her work on lab-grown

lungs one of the top 50 inventions in 2010.

As a woman in STEM, you learn the

importance of balance in many

respects, including balancing

ambition and guilt. With twenty-four hours

in the day, it can be hard to find that balance

between family and career—taking care

of my home life and finding the time and

ASHLEY SCHLOSS & JENETTE CRESO

INTRODUCTION BY MEILI GUPTA

ASHLEY SCHLOSS is the Tech Coalition Manager at Reboot

Representation, an organization and coalition of leading tech companies

dedicated to decreasing disparities for women in color in technology.

Asheley earned her PhD from the Yale School of Medicine, where she

worked in the Regan Lab studying protein-protein interactions.

In today’s world, knowledge in STEM prepares you for just about

any job. But, if you are entering a STEM field where you often find

yourself as the only one in a room—the only woman, only person

of color, only person from your school—there are some skills that you

need. These skills enable you to carve a space and shift a system that

was made by those who might not have seen you coming.

Focus on the three C’s: community, communication, and confidence.

Community: There are likely other people on campus or in

other departments who are also the only or one of a few. Look for

affinity groups where you can find community and assistance.

Talk to people—you might find shared experiences, tips on

overcoming loneliness, and more.

Communication: Self-advocate: email your professor with that

nagging question, ask your TA to grab a coffee, connect with that one

person who graduated a couple years ago on LinkedIn, sign up to give

a presentation. Networking is daunting, but it is important. The more

people who know about your work, your goals, and your passions, the

easier it is for them to support you and amplify your success.

Confidence: This is an uncomfortable one, but confidence comes

from practice. If you are nervous about a presentation, application,

interview, etc., practice with any and everyone who has the time. Allow

people to give you feedback, implement the feedback, and practice

more. Sounds boring, but it works. My biggest failures came from not

seeking feedback and my biggest wins came from practice.

You got this! I believe in you. ■

LAURA NIKLASON

INTRODUCTION BY TIFFANY LIAO

energy to pursue my career ambitions in

the lab. The way I address that is by brutally

simplifying my life down to family and job—

not too much shopping. From my startup

experience, one of the important lessons

I learned is this: if you’re doing it for the

money, it’s the wrong reason! The rewards are

for the long term, and you have to be able

to stick to it (fifteen years and running for

me!) Now, for the first years: Focus on what

you like and what you are good at, NOT on

what is fashionable right now. When I started

working on engineered blood vessels, there

was this unspoken pressure to pursue what

was fashionable like gene therapy, which

died for fifteen years before coming back.

So, pursuing your interest is better in the

long run. If you’re thinking about learning

hard sciences, do it NOW. I studied physics

and minored in biophysics in college and

through my career experience, I can tell you

that it is MUCH easier to learn the hard

sciences in a structured setting. For all the

women out there, I will leave you with this:

one of the most fascinating phenomena

I have seen is the difference between how

women and men perceive achievement

and difficulty. Women are not comfortable

being in front of their own success, but very

comfortable being in front of their own

failure. This is disadvantageous—give

yourself the credit you deserve! ■

JENNETTE CRESO grew up in Washington and now resides in

Pierson College at Yale. She is working on her PhD, using engineered

heart tissue to model and evaluate the hereditary genetic mutations

that cause heart disease. She is also an Executive Board Member

for the Yale Society of Women Engineers.

Fear of starting something new can be a tall barrier when

it comes to finding the right career path. It’s not a secret

that the learning curves in STEM are steep; changing

fields can mean learning a whole new foundation of vocabulary

and techniques. This is particularly challenging in an academic

environment, where it can feel like everyone else in the field

is miles ahead of you. I know firsthand how intimidating this

can be; I changed from pre-med to

The

confidence

to change

trajectory is

essential for

finding the

right fit.

chemical engineering in undergrad,

before changing again to biomedical

engineering in graduate school.

The confidence to change trajectory

is essential for finding the right fit.

Settling for a research project, a thesis

topic, or a degree that is just “good

enough” is never going to bring you

a passionate or fulfilling career. The

time you spent doing something else

is never a waste, but rather it is what

led you to a new career that is an even better fit.

So, my advice is to gain as much exposure as you can along

your journey. Take a different class from your friends, sign

up for more events, and talk to people in various fields to

gain new perspectives. Most importantly, don’t let the fear of

change keep you from starting on a better path for yourself. ■


TAMAR GELLER & TAYLOR CHAPMAN

TAMAR GELLER ’23 is an Electrical Engineering and Computer

Science major at Yale. Her work has led her to different corners

of the world: Israel, where she created an award-winning poster

on a transistor’s electronic properties; California, where she was

a research assistant at the Center for Health Policy at Stanford;

and most recently, New Haven, where she does research at the

Intelligent Computing Lab.

One of her recent personal projects is called “Following the

Footnote,” a database created with the Python programming

language that interconnects three thousand different books and

determines the most influential authors in a sample.

At Yale, she is one of the first female Co-Chairs of the Yale

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineering (Y-IEEE), an

engineering club that works on high-toned projects such as sending

radio messages to the International Space Station or lighting up

campus towers. Since electrical engineering is a traditionally maledominated

field, Tamar feels empowered to serve as a leader of this

branch and as a member of the larger national organization.

When I was in fifth grade, my teacher placed me in the

advanced math group. I should have been honored

and excited. Instead, I dreaded it.

The group consisted of me and five other boys at a time when

cooties were the top concern. The math sessions were long and

lonely—I didn’t feel comfortable asking my

peers to clarify questions or show me their

methods for solving problems. It quickly

became clear to me that success in challenging

STEM fields requires more than just academic

accomplishment. It is built upon friendship,

support, and collaboration.

At Yale, I have been so fortunate to

develop strong friendships within the STEM

community which have paved the way for

academic growth. Whether it is a challenging

problem set, a complicated research project, or

an amusing (yet nerdy) joke, I have friends and

peers to turn to. They give me the confidence

to take on harder classes, and ambitious STEM

projects that I wouldn’t have been able to do on

my own. Our shared passion for technology

and problem solving creates bonds that go

beyond just problem sets and labs. These bonds

represent a common way of thinking and

approach to everyday life.

To my fellow women in STEM: take advantage

of those bonds. Build your community early on

and know that it is a give and take. Ask for help—

you don’t have to do everything on your own.

STEM is an inherently interdisciplinary

field. Building a successful prototype or completing work in a

lab requires collaboration from those with diverse perspectives.

Friendship and support not only makes that collaboration

possible, but also sometimes fun. ■


INTRODUCTION BY RAJ PANDYA

When you are

only person in

the room from an

underrepresented

background, it

can also feel like

there is a strict

mold in which

you have to fit to

meet the idea of

what it means to

be a scientist, an

engineer, or even a

student in STEM.

Advice

SHORT

TAYLOR CHAPMAN is a junior at Yale majoring in Electrical

Engineering and Environmental Studies. Before coming to Yale,

Taylor received an Associate’s Degree in Electronics Engineering

Technology at Horry-Georgetown Technical College while

simultaneously finishing high school.

At Yale, she continues to gain experience in energy-related fields, such as

alternative energy technologies, power distribution networks, and energy

efficiency techniques. After research experience at Yale’s Optoelectronics

Materials and Devices Lab through the Science, Technology, and Research

Scholars program during her first summer, Taylor sought to learn more

about power systems and renewable energy technologies last spring

while studying abroad in Ireland. At the same time, she also conducted

research at University College Dublin’s Energy Institute.

Taylor is one of the first two female Co-Chairs of the Yale Student

Branch of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineering (Y-IEEE),

which is currently spearheading many unique engineering projects. “I’m

very excited for what we will all be able to accomplish. Because [recently]

I feel like the doors [are] opening a lot more,” Taylor says.

As many of us would agree, STEM is extraordinary! It

is a field that contains a whole world of curiosity and is

constantly shaping our society with each new discovery.

Combined with the community of passionate people it houses,

STEM is delightful to be a part of!

Yet, while STEM is all those wonderful

things, it can simultaneously present itself as

daunting and restrictive. With our meticulously

laid out curriculums and stringent benchmarks

and GPAs requirements for post-graduate

opportunities, it often seems like there is a

very defined path to follow. When you are only

person in the room from an underrepresented

background, it can also feel like there is a strict

mold in which you have to fit to meet the idea

of what it means to be a scientist, an engineer,

or even a student in STEM.

However, in the time since I started my

own journey in engineering, I have found that

STEM’s restrictiveness is an illusion. You could

say there is an enormous “margin of error” in

which you can take risks, do unconventional

things, and be yourself while still being the

engineer (or other type of scientist) that you

dreamed of being. By wandering off the path

a bit, you might find yourself traveling and

studying abroad (like me!), learning a new

language (I know STEM students who have

taken Acadian and Egyptian!), becoming a

dancer or musician (I’m sure the Ballroom

Dance Team and the marching band benefit

immensely from their STEM students’ counting skills), and the list

goes on. I have learned that being in STEM does not mean we can’t

embrace our passions, be proud of our identities, or explore new

curiosities outside of STEM. In fact, it only makes us stronger! ■


SHORT

Pharmacology

A POTENTIAL THERAPEUTIC

ROUTE FOR WOLFRAM SYNDROME

Barbara Ehrlich, Forging Her Own Path

BY VERONICA LEE

ART BY ELLIE GABRIEL

From the beginning of her career, Barbara Ehrlich has been

break to attend a lecture,” Ehrlich said. But nevertheless, she

interested in using basic science to address problems in

forged her own path. She combined her two thirty-minute

human health. As a professor of pharmacology at the

coffee breaks into an hour break so that she also could attend

Yale School of Medicine, she leads her research team in the

search for new drugs that can help patients suffering from

Wolfram syndrome: a pediatric genetic disorder characterized

by childhood-onset diabetes, loss of vision and hearing,

neurological and psychiatric symptoms, and often early

death. Recently, Ehrlich and her team found that abnormal

calcium signaling—a mechanism used for communication

between cell structures—may cause the disease. In light

of this discovery, the group proposed a potential

new treatment involving two existing drugs:

ibudilast and a calpain inhibitor. Ehrlich’s

findings are especially exciting because

there is currently no treatment for

this lethal disorder. In addition

to studying Wolfram syndrome,

Ehrlich also investigates polycystic

lectures. After that summer, she went back to Brown and began

to pursue scientific research under Dr. Cserr’s guidance.

In graduate school at UCLA, she was the only female student

to advance past the first year. Oftentimes, she was sent to

conferences and events where she was the only woman in the

room. “There were times where I couldn’t get anyone to talk to

me,” Ehrlich said. But despite the adversity she faced, Ehrlich

says she was blessed by generous people at different points

in her career. She recalls a specific moment during

graduate school when a highly-respected

senior male scientist loudly exclaimed,

“This is so interesting!” while publicly

discussing her work to encourage his

peers to accept her into what was

very much a “boys with MD/PhDs

club.” Ehrlich recalls that, even

kidney disease—a condition

though it happened a long time

that causes cysts to grow in the

ago, the moment remains special

kidneys—and

chemotherapy-

to her to this day.

related pain in the hands and feet.

However, research is only part

of what Ehrlich does—she has

also dedicated her life to mentoring

According to Ehrlich, those who

encourage the research of the others,

especially underrepresented scientists,

are important allies. When she joined

students in STEM. “The most

the faculty at Yale twenty-three years

rewarding thing is when my former

students tell me ‘You know, I was going

to call you for some advice, but then I heard

your voice in my head and I knew exactly what

you were going to say,’” Ehrlich said. Ehrlich says that

she learns a lot from her students about expectations and

assumptions, and loves seeing them succeed.

In a way, Ehrlich is passing the torch of mentorship from

when she received guidance as a young scientist. Throughout

her life, Ehrlich said that she’s been blessed with many

wonderful mentors, including Dr. Helen Cserr—a “tough

woman,” as Ehrlich described her, who “had to fight for

everything she got at the university.”

Throughout her career, Ehrlich has also experienced the

impact of working in a field long dominated by men. When she

was still an undergraduate student at Brown, she got her first

job working in at the Marine Biological Lab in Woods Hole,

Massachusetts. “Back then, the only job available for girls was

chambermaid. Only the boys were allowed to take an additional

ago, Ehrlich was part of a special program

to increase the number of tenured women at

the School of Medicine. At that time, only sixteen

to seventeen percent of tenured professors were

women. Now, that number has jumped to twenty percent—a

definite improvement, but not enough according to Ehrlich. In

her opinion, further change remains necessary.

But she’s not just waiting for this change to happen. Ehrlich

continues to advocate for her female students and encourage

them to persist in the face of challenges. As Ehrlich describes,

confidence, a positive attitude, and being able to bounce back

from failure are key for success, and are attributes that she

tries to instill in all of her students.

“They always find a way to my door,” Ehrlich said of her

female students, “and I hope it stays like that as long as I’m

here.” Indeed, Ehrlich has not only forged her own path as

a woman in science, but continues to have an impact on the

next generation of STEM leaders—especially supporting and

amplifying the voices of other women in science. ■


WHY REPRESENTATION MATTERS

Holistic Approaches to

Treating the Human Brain

When Kelly Cosgrove was a graduate student in clinical

psychology, she started out her research in behavioral

neuroscience, with a focus on human addictive

disorders. But in the course of her studies, she became intrigued by

the association between the brain and behavior. This fascination

led to a transition into studying Positron Emission Tomography, or

PET, for brain imaging in neuroscience. She is now a Professor of

Psychiatry and of Neuroscience and of Radiology and Biomedical

Imaging at the Yale School of Medicine.

PET imaging begins with the injection of a radiotracer—a chemical

compound labeled with a radioactive isotope for easy detection. As

the radiotracer decays, it emits positrons, subatomic particles that

have a positive charge, which collide with electrons and form gamma

rays that are detected by a PET camera. Different radiotracers can

target specific chemicals or proteins in the brain, giving researchers

an understanding of neurobiology at the molecular level. PET differs

from other brain imaging techniques in that it can detect quantifiable

levels of neurochemicals, whereas other methods, including a few

types of magnetic resonance imaging, focus on brain structure,

volume, and electrical activity. This method enables researchers to

track detailed changes in neurochemical activity in real time and can

be leveraged to understand how the brain recovers from addiction.

Currently, Cosgrove's lab investigates a wide range of addiction

disorders—including alcohol use disorder, nicotine addiction,

opioid use disorder—and psychiatric disorders—such as PTSD

and depression, which can often develop simultaneously.

Volunteers come in for an intake appointment and are subjected

to psychiatric and medical screenings before getting a PET scan.

Different specialists, from physicists to radiochemists, are involved

in gathering and analyzing the resulting outcome measures. "It's

really team science to do PET imaging in people," Cosgrove said.

Some of the team’s most intriguing findings have stemmed

from their exploration of biological sex differences. Among these

interesting observations is what the group has unearthed about the

mechanisms underlying addiction to tobacco smoking. Cosgrove

explained that, in the field of neurobiology, multiple studies have

shown that animals administered with drugs release dopamine in

the ventral striatum, which is a reward center in the brain.

However, the majority of these studies used only male rodents as

subjects. Upon doing a similar study in people and comparing the PET

imaging results in males and females who smoke cigarettes, Cosgrove's

team found that female smokers released significantly less dopamine

than male smokers. "Smoking is a good example because they've found

sex differences in treatment, too, that women don't respond as well

to the nicotine patches," Cosgrove said. The finding highlights the

importance of increasing representation in the subjects of studies, in

this case in terms of sex, due to biological differences that ought to be

accounted for when providing the most appropriate treatment to every

patient. "Otherwise, the default is men. You're treating everybody based

on half the population," Cosgrove explained. Cosgrove emphasized the

importance of normalizing research in the field of sex differences.


BY ALEXA JEANNE LOSTE

ART BY CHARLOTTE LEAKEY

Cosgrove suggested that the previous lack of focus in the area

could be due to insufficient gender representation among the

researchers themselves, as scientific academia has been historically

male-dominated. She shared that she was inspired to do research

in this specific field as a result of having female mentors when she

was in graduate school and as a postdoctoral student.

Recently, Cosgrove has been working in neuroimmunology,

a field that draws connections between the brain and

immune response. Her work has found that people who are

psychiatrically compromised have blunted immune responses

compared to those who are healthy, which could explain why

disorders such as PTSD or addiction are correlated with many

medical comorbidities. "I think [this] speaks to a holistic,

transdisciplinary way of treating people, which is important...

Team science is more impactful," Cosgrove said. This suggests

that targeting the immune-related systemic diseases might also

improve an individual's psychiatric condition.

Moving forward, Cosgrove is involved in establishing the new

Yale-Specialized Center of Research Excellence (YALE-SCORE).

The center will investigate sex differences in alcohol use disorder,

specializing on understanding sex-specific issues and developing

treatments—a particularly relevant focus because the disorder

prevalence is currently increasing among women.

Cosgrove's experiences as a female scientist with a clinical

psychology background speaks to how increasing representation—in

terms of sex, academic background, and other identities—can lead to

new ways of approaching problems in science. More holistic scientific

research paves the path to more appropriate methods of treatment. ■

November 2020

Neuroscience

Cosgrove, K. (2019, September 24). Yale School of Medicine.

Retrieved from Cosgrove Lab: https://medicine.yale.edu/

lab/cosgrove/

Cosgrove, K. (2020, September 17). (A. J. Loste, Interviewer)

SHORT

Yale Scientific Magazine

9

SHORT

Physiology

Men and Women are

Physiologically Unequal

AN EQUAL RESEARCH EMPHASIS

BY SOPHIA ZHUANG

ART BY ANASTHASIA SHILOV

Until almost thirty years ago, half the United States population

was excluded from scientific research. It was not until 1993

that the NIH Revitalization Act required researchers to

include women in scientific studies. Male and female physiological

systems are inarguably different and consequentially express separate

immune responses. To further explore this sex-based distinction,

Nina Stachenfeld, a senior researcher at the Yale School of Medicine

(YSM) and the John B. Pierce Laboratory, has helped the Federation of

American Societies for Experimental Biology Journal compile a series of

reviews, “Sex as a Variable in Human Research: A Systems Approach.”

This series recognizes sex differences in physiological responses to

diseases like addiction and high blood pressure as well as today’s

changing concept of gender identity and how this affects research.

In the past, many scientists excluded women from studies, believing

that physiological responses were identical between sexes. Many later

complained that women presented difficulties in hormonal regulation.

“Estrogen, for example, has an impact on blood pressure regulation. [So,]

if we’re studying women, we want to ensure that we’re controlling for

estrogen levels and being cognizant of when we might test them in the

[menstrual] cycle,” Stachenfeld explained. Regulating these factors may

seem painstaking, but Stachenfeld counters that these aspects can be easily

screened for and monitored. “Physiologists who do these kinds of studies

control for [fickle factors] all the time, and they’re not easy to control

for, but we do it,” asserted Stachenfeld. Scientists are already precisely

regulating factors like environmental temperature, so including women

in research may only require additional preliminary surveys regarding

menstrual cycle timing, contraceptives, and pregnancy possibility.

Ultimately, hormonal regulation in females is a minute inconvenience

when compared to the necessity of including women in research.

Stachenfeld explained that once scientists were forced to

conduct research on women, they began noticing big differences

in female systemic regulation and treatment response. “It could

[even] be as simple as dosages being too high, given that women

are generally smaller than men,” Stachenfeld described, referring

to blood pressure medication. Including women in research

has elucidated many simple differences, profoundly affecting

treatment development and clinical practice. In her own research,

Stachenfeld focuses on cardiovascular disease, which often presents

incongruously between sexes. “When a woman comes to the doctor

and describes certain symptoms, the doctor can recognize that she’s

maybe having a mild heart attack; in the past, the doctor might

have thought that it was just indigestion,” Stachenfeld notes. These

distinctions are invaluable to clinical care and were recognized

only when women began to be included in medical research.

In August, a study by Yale researchers highlighted how men and

women express different physiological responses to COVID-19, with

men exhibiting weaker immune responses (see p. 16 of this issue).

By including women in studies, researchers began recognizing that

these sex differences actually exist in physiological responses and

could even offer insight into the disease’s underlying mechanism.

These understandings may lead to new developments for researchers

working in drug discovery and vaccine development, which is

especially important in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Previously, many researchers believed that all mechanistic work

had to be done in animals, because humans posed numerous ethical

concerns. However, “Scientists have come up with incredibly creative

ways to examine humans and their responses,” Stachenfeld explained.

Animals remain crucial to research, but they are not the same

as humans. “Eventually, we do have to take that step [to reach our

ultimate goal] to improve and impact human health,” Stachenfeld

pointed out. As scientists urgently perform trials and research for

COVID-19, they must also focus on the sex-specific physiological

responses in humans and the subsequent implications.

When considering the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic,

Stachenfeld has echoed YSM Dean Nancy J. Brown’s sentiment

that the pandemic offers a unique opportunity to create structural

modifications at Yale. Stachenfeld believes that the pandemic is

motivating necessary changes in YSM related to both COVID-19 and

gender equality. Additionally, Stachenfeld co-chairs the Committee

on the Status of Women in Medicine (SWIM), which advocates for

improvements in YSM’s structure surrounding sexual harassment

and gender equity policies as well as the perception of women and

their role in medical academia.

Celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of women at Yale, we must

recognize that our differences underlie

and enrich our unity. Women and

men have varied perspectives,

but these diverse experiences

supplement the entire community

with a more comprehensive

mindset. Similarly, female and

male physiological systems

are distinct; recognizing these

sex differences in research

contributes to advancements

in not only women’s health but

also treatment development,

which benefits all sexes. ■


Major Depressive Disorders

Are Underreported and

Prone to Recall Error

NEW STUDY BY THE

YALE SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH FINDS

BY ANJALI MANGLA & VICTORIA OUYANG

ART BY SARAH TENG

Policy

SHORT

Mental health is an increasingly prevalent issue in the

United States. As more attention is given to mental

health disorders, public policies that seek to prevent the

occurrence and recurrence of mental health disorders rely on the

accuracy of national survey data. Specifically, major depressive

episodes (MDEs) are key contributors to mental health disorders,

such as major depressive disorder and bipolar disorder. The

National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) defines an

MDE as a period of at least two weeks in which a person experiences

a depressed mood, loss of interest in activities, significant weight

loss or gain, insomnia, fatigue, and thoughts of suicide. Previous

data from the NSDUH shows that more than thirty-four million

adults (17 percent of women and 10.7 percent of men) reported a

history of at least one depressive episode in 2017.

A group of researchers, led by Jamie Tam, assistant professor in the

Department of Health Policy and Management at Yale, found that the

data provided by the NSDUH presents an irregularity–the number of

lifetime depressive episodes looked to actually decrease with age. “I

had to investigate why the data were showing that, when we know

that for virtually every other health condition, lifetime prevalence

should always increase with age,” Tam explained. Ultimately, the

team found that the NSDUH survey is extremely likely to contain

recall error, wherein participants may have experienced depressive

episodes, but they failed to report them. Indeed, recall error is an

important factor in the misreporting of depression prevalence in

the U.S. “Essentially, in the whole of the U.S., maybe you think some

proportion of the population has had a history of depression, but if

you correct for recall error, that proportion is much higher, actually,”

she said. In particular, the researchers found that older adults are

especially likely to underreport their history of depression.

The team developed a simulation model that corrected for recall

error, using NSDUH data from 2005–2017. They found that, with

the simulated model, the true proportion of American adults who

have experienced MDEs is estimated to be 30.1 percent in women

and 17.4 percent in men, results that are significantly higher than

those reported by the NSDUH.

Tam hypothesizes that women report more depressive

episodes than men due to the way society trains women and men

to process emotions differently. Depression may also manifest

differently in women compared to men; women are proven to

typically process emotions with a sadness response, whereas men

tend to respond with anger. Consequently, men with depression

are more stigmatized, whereas women are more likely to seek

treatment for mental conditions.

As for the link between recall error and underreporting within

older American populations, major depressive disorders are linked

to social isolation. “Elderly people who are more socially connected,

who have communities of support have much better mental health

than those for example who are living single,” Tam said. People

sixty-five and above tend to look back on histories of depression and

downplay those symptoms, naming them as something like “growing

pains.” Separately, younger adults from ages eighteen to twenty-five

are more likely to experience depression than ever before. Reported

cases among young adults have increased significantly in the past few

years, but this helps researchers understand the patterns of depression

that manifest with age. This research helps scientists understand the

different situations of depression with different age groups.

Tam sees this research as promising towards U.S. mental health

policy. Currently, the U.S. has an underinvestment of resources to

prevent depression, especially in prevention of subsequent depressive

episodes among individuals who have a history of depression. “We do

have a broader problem of mental health programs failing to get the

attention, resources, and support that they warrant. Mental health

conditions are very common and affect such a large portion of the

U.S. population. It’s really a shame that government decision-makers

haven’t really allocated the same level of resources for mental health

compared to physical health. Part of the goal of studies like this is to

identify the scale and scope of the problem,” Tam said.

By providing a better understanding of the sources of error

underlying the reporting of depressive episodes, this study lays the

groundwork for more accurate estimation of the cost of depression to

society, in terms of productivity and quality of life, and opens doors

to more effective data-driven solutions to come. ■

Tam, J., Mezuk, B., Zivin, K., & Meza, R. (2020). U.S. Simulation of

Lifetime Major Depressive Episode Prevalence and Recall Error.

American Journal Of Preventive Medicine, 59(2), e39-e47. https://

doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2020.03.021

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

(2018). 2017 National Survey on Drug Use and Health: public

use file codebook [Ebook]. Rockville, MD. Retrieved from

https://bit.ly/330oMar



FOCUS

Astrophysics

NOT-SO-DARK Cosmologists

Discover

Substructures

MATTER?

Inconsistent With

Current Theory

BY CHRISTOPHER POSTON

ART BY CHARLOTTE LEAKEY

If you’ve ever read a schlocky scifi

novel or tuned into an episode

of Cosmos, you’ve probably heard

of dark matter, the mysterious sister to

ordinary baryonic matter that makes up

some eighty-five percent of our universe.

So-called because it doesn’t interact with

electromagnetic radiation or normal

matter, dark matter has only ever been

observed indirectly via its gravitational

influence. What is it made of? No one

is quite sure—candidate explanations

range from new elementary particles

to primordial black holes. Nearly all

of the major schools of thought in the

astrophysics community subscribe to

a “cold dark matter” (CDM) model, in

which the constituent particles move

slowly and larger structures emerge

hierarchically from the bottom up. But,

while the consensus CDM model has

been very successful, there are still some

inconsistencies with observation—and

another big one has just emerged.

The Findings

In a recent high-profile study published

in Science, several cosmologists using the

Hubble Space Telescope and the aptly named

Very Large Telescope in Chile observed

eleven different galaxy clusters, studying

gravitational lensing effects—the warping

of light from distant background galaxies

under high gravity—to map out their dark

matter distributions. What they found was

consistent with expectations on the cluster

scale. However, upon deeper inspection,

the cosmologists uncovered a shocking

phenomenon on smaller scales (five to ten

kiloparsecs): within the individual cluster

member galaxies, the dark matter was

so concentrated that it produced lensing

effects stronger than predicted by a factor

of ten! In other words, the dark matter in

these galaxies was packed together much

more tightly than it should have been.

This was an incredible discrepancy,

but the researchers made sure their

methodology was airtight. They arrived

at their predictions by generating a

probability metric for lensing effects

using models of similar galaxy clusters

in various numerical simulations. First,

in the real universe, they determined the

speeds of stars in several cluster galaxies

using spectroscopy, which enabled them

to constrain the dark matter distribution

with high precision. They then analyzed

simulated galaxy clusters with similar

masses and distances from Earth and

compared the resulting dark matter

distributions with their observations. To

top it all off, this procedure was repeated

with several numerical simulations and

methodologies developed by independent

research groups. And the outcome? The

discrepancy was virtually unchanged across

all simulations: a full order of magnitude.

A Quest for Contradictions

This method for investigating dark

matter distribution,

which has

recently

become the

standard in

the field, was

originally

developed by

team member

Professor Priyamvada

Natarajan of Yale

University. Natarajan has made seminal

contributions over the years to topics

like black hole physics and dark

matter physics, particularly the use

of gravitational lensing distortions to

put theoretical predictions to the test.

“Lensing is as direct of an observation

as you can make to derive the spatial

distribution of dark matter,” Natarajan

said. “In my PhD, my first paper was

actually a conceptualization of the dark

matter distribution in a cluster that

would make it amenable to be tested with

cosmological simulations of structure

formation in the universe. I have

always been interested, scientifically, in

confronting observations with theory.”

Indeed, Natarajan’s publication

history is speckled with similar studies

of dark matter distribution conducted

in intervals of roughly five years, each

aiming to harness the best available

simulations and compare them

with high-power observations

to probe for newly detectable

differences. “In the past

we found broad-based

agreement,” Natarajan said,

“but initially because of the

data quality, we couldn’t

push the theory too much.”

For instance, previous

studies that

could only

compare

t h e


Astrophysics

FOCUS

number of dark matter clumps (the

granularity of the dark matter) with

predictions found no discrepancy—

because there was none. Only in 2017,

when Natarajan led a study with her

collaborators that used these events

to map the spatial distributions and

internal structure of dark matter in

individual galaxies, equipped with the

best available Hubble Space Telescope

data and state-of-the-art simulations,

did small discrepancies begin to appear.

“In 2017, we saw a small hint… But

finally now, the quality of the data and

the resolution of the simulations have

sort of converged and we detected this

gap,” Natarajan said. By collecting highquality

observational data en masse and

comparing it with simulations based on

current theory, Natarajan has subjected

the CDM theory to ruthless scrutiny—

and it seems the model may have finally

cracked under the pressure. “We did

this computation for many different,

independent simulations. And they all

agree with each other, but not with the

observational finding—so it’s something

fundamental, it’s a missing ingredient,”

Natarajan said.

The Missing Ingredient

Hence, the situation: the simulations

have been independently produced, the

results verified, the process peer-reviewed,


and the conclusions

published. An

undeniable gulf

now yawns between

observation and

theory. What, then,

could be missing?

Natarajan excitedly

identified two

major possibilities:

“When you find

a gap, usually it

means that the

current model you

have is missing

something—you

can often just

add in [some

new parameters]

and get things to

match. But very

occasionally, you

find a mismatch that absolutely cannot

be explained with the current theory, but

instead points the way to a future theory

with more explanatory power.”

To drive home her meaning, Natarajan

produced two poignant examples from

the history of science. In the early 1800s

when the orbit of Uranus was first properly

mapped, it did not fit the projections of

Newton’s and Kepler’s laws. Using only

pencil and paper, the French mathematician

Urbain Le Verrier explained the discrepancy

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

by predicting the existence of Neptune.

Le Verrier mailed a letter to the Berlin

Observatory, and the planet was discovered

the very night it arrived—no change to

the laws of physics was required. Later in

1859, a similar problem would crop up with

the unexplained precession of Mercury’s

perihelion in its orbit about the Sun. Le

Verrier again predicted an undiscovered

planet—Vulcan—but this time, the proper

explanation had to wait fifty years for the

arrival of Einstein’s theory of general relativity

and its complete upheaval of prevailing theory.

“So, you never know, when there’s a gap,

whether you’re in the Uranus situation or

the Mercury situation,” Natarajan said.

It could be that there is some unknown

process which occurs, for instance, as

galaxies are pulled toward the center of a

cluster, that strips or otherwise impacts the

dark matter within in ways we cannot yet

comprehend. But the unexplained density

of dark matter in these galaxies could also

indicate a misunderstanding of the esoteric

substance’s fundamental nature. Things tend

to condense because some force is pulling

them together—perhaps there are unknown

interacting or self-interacting properties of

dark matter? If so, would it really be “dark”

after all? Could this discrepancy even be a

clue on the long and winding trail toward

a quantum theory of gravity? One thing is

clear—to one degree or another, it’s back to

the drawing board with dark matter. ■

CHRISTOPHER POSTON

CHRISTOPHER POSTON is a third-year Mathematics/Computer Science major in Pauli Murray

College. In addition to writing for YSM, he works as a student software developer at the Peabody

Museum and belongs to the Yale Undergraduate Math Society. In his free time he enjoys playing

fingerstyle folk guitar, reading hard science fiction, and spending time with his two puppies.

THE AUTHOR WOULD LIKE TO THANK Dr. Priyamvada Natarajan for her time and

enthusiasm in describing her research.

FURTHER READING

Meneghetti, M., Davoli, G., Bergamini, P., Rosati, P., Natarajan, P., Giocoli, C., . . . Metcalf, R.

B. (2020). An excess of small-scale gravitational lenses observed in galaxy clusters. Science,

369(6509), 1347-1351. doi:10.1126/science.aax5164

Natarajan, P. (2020, September 25). Science Magazine Interview [Telephone interview].

Natarajan, P., Chadayammuri, U., Jauzac, M., Richard, J., Kneib, J., Ebeling, H., . . . Vogelsberger, M.

(2017). Mapping substructure in the HST Frontier Fields cluster lenses and in cosmological

simulations. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 468(2), 1962-1980.

doi:10.1093/mnras/stw3385

Natarajan, P., De Lucia, G., & Springel, V. (2007). Substructure in lensing clusters and simulations.

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 376(17), 180-192. doi:10.1111/j.1365-

2966.2007.11399.x

Natarajan, P., & Kneib, J. (1997). Lensing by galaxy haloes in clusters of galaxies. Monthly Notices

of the Royal Astronomical Society, 287(4), 833-847. doi:10.1093/mnras/287.4.833


FOCUS

Geophysics

EARTH’S EVOLUTION

THROUGH

EONS

BY CINDY KUANG

AND JERRY

RUVALCABA

ART BY

NOORA SAID

Using the

history of

argon as a

constraint

of

continental

evolution

How can we study crustal development?

Scientists have long sought to understand

the development of the Earth—in

particular, what exactly has allowed it to

transform into the only known life-harboring

planet? Yale graduate student Meng Guo

and her advisor Jun Korenaga have aimed

to build a piece of this complex puzzle in a

recent publication in Science Advances. In

the paper, the team looks into understanding

the development of Earth’s crust through a

process known as argon degassing.

The development of Earth’s crust has been

an important area of study since the 1960s;

an accurate look into the evolution of crust

can shed light on much about the geology

and nature of early Earth. Because of this,

there have been many different models

made to try to accurately predict how Earth’s

crust came to be; however, there has been

tremendous variation in these estimates.

To track the evolution of continental crust

is a complicated task, with many different

factors. “[Crustal development] contains

two aspects: how the mass of continental

crust has evolved through time and if

the continental crust’s composition has

significantly changed,” Guo said.

Previous attempts to constrain and

detail this development have used a

variety of methods, such as mantlebased

methods, which directly track

the loss of the mantle over time and

inferring crustal evolution accordingly.

“Geologists consider the mantle and

crust as complementary, so they sum

up to a constant volume. This means if

you generate crust you have to lose the

same amount of mantle. So, the mantlebased

model is the most traditional and

direct method,” Guo said. However, in

order to bring a new perspective to this

controversial topic, Guo looked to the

changing argon content in the atmosphere

to indirectly track crust development.

When the Earth’s crust is created, noble

gases are released and go off into the

atmosphere, a process which is traceable.

By tracking the concentration of argon in

the atmosphere, her model would infer

how the crust developed through time.

Guo’s model benefits from new data

published in Nature in 2013, which provided

estimates on the Archean atmospheric argon

ratio using hydrothermal quartz. “Nobody

can get a reasonable crust evolution

throughout the entirety of Earth’s history

using only today’s atmosphere composition,”

Guo said. Thus, with this data as a source

of argon concentrations in the distant

past, along with the calculated current day

concentration, Guo was able to create this

new constraint on her model.

Additionally, Guo’s model took a

multidisciplinary approach and introduced

a plethora of other constraints to calculate

crust development, incorporating

robust observations from geophysics,

geochemistry, and geology. These were

combined to produce a model for

development which Guo believes gives

a self-consistent story of continental

formation. Her results indicate that there

was rapid crustal growth during the early

stages of Earth. The model also showed that

the crust was potassium-rich during this

period. Guo sees that this model will have

important ramifications in further studies

of plate tectonics, surface environment, and

mantle convection for early Earth.


Geophysics

FOCUS

Navigating STEM: Meng Guo’s journey

Guo remarks that the geology department

at Yale—recently renamed the “Department

of Earth & Planetary Sciences”—was one

of the first institutions in the United States

where geology was taught. Guo is hopeful

about the future of women in geology: “It’s

a really good time for female scientists to

thrive. People are more aware of

the gender issue in academia, in

STEM, and people are trying to

embrace female scientists.” When

she first matriculated at Yale for

her PhD in geophysics in 2018,

there were ten new PhD students

in her class and six were female.

“Knowing how welcoming my

department was to female PhDs

was very nice,” she said.

When it comes to advice, Guo has one

mantra she wants to pass onto younger

students who may want to pursue a similar

career path: “Explore any interest you have.

Don’t think that if you get into this subject,

this major, that this is what you’ll have to

be for the rest of your life. Don’t think that

way.” This advice is reflected in her own

experience; Guo started by completing

an undergraduate degree in chemistry,

switched to geochemistry for her master’s,

and is now studying geophysics for her

PhD. Ultimately, she reflects that the

hardest part of this journey was having

to decide between staying with what was

comfortable and risking pursuit of her

dream. This choice presented itself when

she was working a few years before her

master’s degree, at a time when she was sure

that current job would be her career.

“You’re facing a major life-changing

decision and you have to know what you

really want in life to make a decision that

DON’T CONFINE YOURSELF,

EXPLORE THE INTERESTS

YOU HAVE, AND YOU MAY

BE SURPRISED WHERE THEY

LEAD YOU.

you won’t regret in the future,” Guo says.

With the financial aid of the Fulbright

Scholarship, she made the choice to quit

her job and begin pursuing her master’s

degree—bringing her to where she is today.

Looking to the future

She encourages students to pursue their

interests in interdisciplinary spaces whenever

possible. She attributes her success with this

new argon degassing model to her past

education. “If I hadn’t had the background

in both geochemistry and geophysics, I

wouldn’t have been able to build this crossdisciplinary

model,” she said.

In the future, Guo is interested in building

a new theoretical framework of coupled

crust-mantle differentiation. She’d also

like to conduct more careful geodynamical

work to ascertain whether mantle

convection had switched from a different,

more archaic mode (involving stagnant-lid

tectonics which was commonly

believed to exist at the time) to

modern plate tectonics during

early Earth conditions, which is

currently a highly debated topic

in geoscience.

As mentioned in the paper,

the most important feature

of this argon model is the

simultaneous application of

multiple observational constraints

to ensure the internal consistency and

convergence of the known thermal

evolution, crustal evolution and degassing

history of the Earth. Just as she needed to

combine these different aspects of the early

Earth to successfully build her model, she

reminds readers: “Don’t confine yourself,

explore the interests you have, and you

may be surprised where they lead you.”

After all, it was this very intersection of

her diverse perspectives and experiences

in academia that led her to develop this

new model indicating rapid crustal growth

during the early ages of Earth. ■

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

CINDY KUANG & JERRY RUVALCABA

CINDY KUANG is a sophomore in Timothy Dwight college, majoring in Neuroscience and History of Science, Medicine and Public Health. Outside

of YSM, she is involved in the Chinese American Student Association, Asian American Health Advocates, Danceworks, and HAVEN Free Clinic.

JERRY RUVALCABA is a sophomore MCDB major in Timothy Dwight college. Apart from writing for YSM, he’s involved in research at the Malvankar

Lab where he focuses on elucidating the mechanisms by which Geobacter sulfurreducens bacteria are able to utilize electron nanowires.

THE AUTHORS WOULD LIKE TO ACKNOWLEDGE Meng Guo for her time and her enthusiasm for her research.

FURTHER READING

Guo, M., & Korenaga, J. (2020). Argon constraints on the early growth of felsic continental crust. Science Advances, 6(21), eaaz6234. https://doi.

org/10.1126/sciadv.aaz6234

Guo, M. (2020, September 28). Argon constraints on the early growth of felsic continental crust [Online interview].

Korenaga, J. (2018). Crustal evolution and mantle dynamics through Earth history. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical,

Physical and Engineering Sciences, 376(2132), 20170408. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2017.0408

Rosas, J. C., & Korenaga, J. (2018). Rapid crustal growth and efficient crustal recycling in the early Earth: Implications for Hadean and Archean

geodynamics. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 494, 42–49. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2018.04.051

Sobolev, A. V., Asafov, E. V., Gurenko, A. A., Arndt, N. T., Batanova, V. G., Portnyagin, M. V., Garbe-Schönberg, D., Wilson, A. H., & Byerly, G. R. (2019).

Deep hydrous mantle reservoir provides evidence for crustal recycling before 3.3 billion years ago. Nature, 571(7766), 555–559. https://doi.

org/10.1038/s41586-019-1399-5

Pujol, M., Marty, B., Burgess, R., Turner, G., & Philippot, P. (2013). Argon isotopic composition of Archaean atmosphere probes early Earth

geodynamics. Nature, 498(7452), 87–90. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature12152



FOCUS

Immunobiology

THE DUALITY SEX OF

OF SEX

THE DUALITY

Sex Plays a Role in

Both COVID-19

Immune Response

and the Careers of

Women in STEM

BY

CATHERINE ZHENG

&

RAQUEL SEQUIERA

ART BY

MIRIAM

KOPYTO

Scientists, like English teachers, always

ask “What?” then “Why?” First observe

a pattern—of metaphors in a novel, of a

phenomenon in nature—then investigate

the reason for it. Months into the

coronavirus pandemic, the majority of published

research was still answering “what” questions: What

age is at greatest risk of hospitalization? Which sex

is more likely to recover? But when it came to why

these differences were observed—and how to use

that information to develop better treatments—the

Iwasaki lab at the Yale School of Medicine was uniquely

poised to find answers. Their latest research revealed

sex differences in the immune response that might

explain differences in COVID-19 disease progression.

The Iwasaki lab, headed by Akiko Iwasaki, focuses on


Immunobiology

FOCUS

innate immunity against viruses and how it

generates adaptive immunity. They work on

projects ranging from the role of autophagy

in innate viral recognition to the effect of

temperature on the common cold virus.

Their research has also provided them

experience with several high biosafety

level viruses. This experience with more

dangerous viruses prepared them well for

this COVID-19 study.

When the COVID-19 pandemic

hit, Albert Ko from the Yale School

of Public Health spearheaded the

launch of the COVID-19 biorepository

study framework called Yale IMPACT

(Implementing Medical and Public health

Action against Coronavirus (Connecticut,

CT)), allowing researchers like Iwasaki

to start collecting patient samples from

Yale New Haven Hospital to participate

in COVID-19 research. This allowed

researchers to analyze patients’ immune

responses from day one and throughout

disease progression to identify different

signatures associated with the immune

response against SARS-CoV-2.

A Tale of Two Immune Responses

For their “immunophenotyping” study of

sex differences in COVID-19, researchers

in the Iwasaki lab zoomed in on the

characteristics of an individual’s immune

response to SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Specifically, the researchers compared

four immune response markers in male

in female patients: viral concentrations in

nasopharyngeal swabs and saliva, anti-

SARS-CoV-2 antibodies and cytokines

(immune signaling molecules) in the blood

plasma, as well as the relative amounts of

different kinds of immune cells.

As the blood samples started to come

in, lab members went into hyperdrive.

According to first author Takehiro

Takahashi, this study was an intense

collaborative effort of immunophenotyping

experiments, data collection, and extensive

data analyses. “Blood came into the lab

usually in the afternoon, then processing

and preparation took around six hours, then

after that we ran it in the [flow cytometry]

machine, so the entire workflow often

went past midnight every day,” Takahashi

said. To identify and analyze blood cells,

researchers use fluorescent antibodies—


molecules that bind their specific targets

like unique magnets. To quantify cell

types, they use a flow cytometer machine

to separate cells based on shape, size, or

other distinguishing characteristics.

The study was broken down into two

comparisons. Volunteers from among

healthcare workers were the healthy control

group, and a group of non-ICU patients who

had not received any immunomodulatory

drugs were labeled Cohort A. The first,

baseline analysis of patients’ initial immune

response compared male and female

healthcare workers in the control group to

male and female patients from Cohort A at

the first sampling time point. The second

comparison was a longitudinal analysis—

comparing the immunophenotypes of male

and female patients across multiple time

points of disease progression.

The longitudinal analysis included

patients who were further along in the

disease, including some in the ICU or

those receiving immunomodulatory

treatments. For this analysis,

epidemiologists mathematically corrected

for variables other than sex, such as age,

BMI, and treatment status. Still, there are

limits to these statistics. The sample size

was relatively small, and options were

limited for the healthy control group.

“Of course, there are no seventy-yearold

healthcare workers, so we just had to

mathematically adjust,” Takahashi said.

From the mosaic of immunophenotype

analyses across time in the two cohorts,

two different immune response patterns

began to emerge. At an early stage of

infection (represented by Cohort A), male

patients seemed to have a stronger innate

immune response than females, indicated

by higher levels of innate immune cells

and the signaling molecules they secrete,

such as interleukin-8. In contrast, female

patients had a stronger adaptive immune

response, indicated by higher levels of

activated cytotoxic T cells, which are

activated by the presence of a virus to

recognize and kill infected cells. These

two patterns carried over into later stages

of COVID-19, as lower levels of T cells

(adaptive immunity) were correlated with

a worse disease progression in males,

while higher levels of innate immune

molecules were correlated with worse

disease progression in females.

While the researchers urge caution

extrapolating too far, their results align

with previous findings that a higher innate

immune response is associated with

worse outcomes for COVID-19 patients.

These findings could be used to study sexdifferentiated

treatments: male patients

might benefit more from boosting the T cell

response to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, while

female patients might benefit more from

tamping down the innate immune response.

Takahashi hopes that this research can

impact future COVID therapies for both

male and female patients.

Looking forward, the Iwasaki lab wants

to look into the effects of COVID-19 on

different organ systems. For example,

autopsies of COVID-19 deaths have

IMAGE COURTESY OF UNSW SYDNEY

Artist render of flow cytometry, a method used to sort blood cells with fluorescent sorting and acoustic sorting.


FOCUS

Immunobiology

IMAGE COURTESY OF YALE MEDICINE

Photograph of Professor Akiko Iwasaki.

revealed evidence of infection in the

brain. In addition, Iwasaki’s lab plans to

investigate underlying immunological

mechanisms of why some patients are

facing long-haul syndrome—severe longterm

consequences of COVID-19.

While these studies are exciting for

the Iwasaki lab, Takahashi mentioned

the intense need to disseminate results

of our COVID-19 research rapidly,

adding pressure to publish quickly.

The lab published the sex differences

study as a preprint, meaning it has not

yet gone through the time-consuming

process of peer review. Nevertheless,

there are benefits to this way of sharing

research. “Preprint is important because

publication takes two or three months or

even longer...but in this kind of pandemic

you have to share information with people

quickly and discuss more openly; and the

pandemic has changed how the preprint

papers are perceived,” Takahashi said.

contribute as a woman in science. “We’re

seeing less and less of women being able to

contribute scientifically because of all these

other obligations...I have a double sense of

duty…not just [to be] doing science, but

communicating science,” Iwasaki said.

Even prior to the pandemic, the lack of

women in STEM has always been a major

issue, and one that Iwasaki is passionate

about. Iwasaki was born and raised in Iga,

Japan. With her parents as role models—her

father was a physicist and her mother fought

for women’s rights in the workplace—

she decided from a young age to pursue

science. Inspired by her immunology

professor at the University of Toronto,

where she majored in biochemistry and

minored in physics, Iwasaki got her PhD

in immunology. She spent two years as a

postdoctoral fellow at the NIH, where she

studied the roles of dendritic cells.

Iwasaki went on to do groundbreaking

research after joining Yale’s Department

of Immunology. She developed the

ERVMap—a tool used to map endogenous

retroviruses (ERVs) in the genome—and a

two-stage vaccination strategy called prime

and pull, which focuses on enhancing T cell

response. Taking after her mother, she is a

fierce advocate for women and minorities

in the sciences. At the undergraduate and

graduate levels, more than fifty percent

of STEM students are women. However,

attrition really begins in graduate school

all the way through to professor levels.

While more serious issues like sexual

harassment must be addressed, more covert

discrimination actually plays the biggest

role in women being pushed out of science.

Reflecting on her own experiences,

Iwasaki says that women are often left

out of discussions, decisions, and other

opportunities. When their voices are being

overshadowed, it’s important that they

have a support group they can rely on so

that they can be heard. Iwasaki mentions

that tackling these issues requires a

fundamental restructuring of meetings

and decisions to incorporate more women,

and more awareness needs to be spread

about the lack of representation so more

people can recognize the discrimination

and stand up for their female colleagues.

These are things she implements into her

own work, always making sure there is

more than one woman in every meeting

and raising awareness of issues facing

women so that her male colleagues

can promote female voices. On a more

practical note, Iwasaki also says that since

women tend to stay home and take care

of children, having accessible childcare is

also needed to better support women.

Looking back on a career filled with

plenty of challenges, Iwasaki says there’s

nothing she would change about her

choices and her experiences. “Obviously

I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my career

and you learn from that, but I don’t regret

anything,” Iwasaki said. “Finding out what’s

going on in the COVID patients and being

able to hopefully inform future therapy and

potentially vaccines, that’s what motivates

me.” While her lab’s COVID research, her

many other contributions to immunology,

and her work empowering women in STEM

have helped shape the world of science,

Iwasaki’s research has also shaped her. ■

Sex Differences on the Macro Scale

Sex differences, however, are not

limited to immune responses and disease

progression. While gender barriers have

always existed in academia, they have

become especially prevalent during the

coronavirus pandemic, drastically affecting

women’s careers. For example, women with

children or those who need to take care of

loved ones cannot risk going back to work.

While Iwasaki is fortunate enough to be

able to work from home, she recognizes

the issues that many other women—

including trainees in her lab—are facing.

Seeing these barriers drives her further to

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

CATHERINE ZHENG & RAQUEL SEQUEIRA

CATHERINE ZHENG is a sophomore BME major in Pauli Murray college. In addition to writing

for YSM, she’s involved in research and other organizations on campus, and loves going out to

eat with friends.

RAQUEL SEQUEIRA is a senior MB&B major in Timothy Dwight College. In addition to writing

for YSM, she loves to play soccer and to sing in the Glee Club.

THE AUTHORS WOULD LIKE TO THANK Prof. Akiko Iwasaki and Takehiro Takahashi for

sharing their time and enthusiasm about their work.

FURTHER READING

Takahashi, T. et al. (2020). “Sex differences in immune responses that underlie COVID-19

disease outcomes.” Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2700-3.

Viegas, Jennifer. (2018) “Profile of Akiko Iwasaki.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

of the United States of America. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6294888/


OB-GYN

FOCUS

THE ALL-FEMALE

FLANNERY LAB

IMAGE COURTESY OF DIABETES.CO.UK

The Flannery lab, whose research is focused on the intersection between

endocrinology and obstetrics at both the molecular and clinical levels, is

special for being an all-female research group.

BY

BEATRIZ HORTA

&

MAHNOOR SARFRAZ

ART BY

MILA COLIZZA

Dr. Clare Flannery was not always planning on going

down the path of medical research. In fact, she was

a doctor prior to starting her research group. Her

divergence from a career working as a doctor in a clinical

setting to a researcher studying the conjunction between

endocrinology and reproductive medicine began as

a way to address the “number of problems that were

not solved.” As an endocrinology fellow, she realized

there was a gap in knowledge in the field: no one really

understood how the hormone levels in women affected

their intrauterine environment. Flannery’s turning point

came when she encountered a young woman with

IMAGE COURTESY OF DIABETES.CO.UK



FOCUS

OB-GYN

type II diabetes and a pre-cancer in the

uterus but could not find answers in the

literature on how to treat her patient. This

horrified her. “It was obvious that we had

no idea of the solutions, so the problem

begged to be dissected out, figured out.”

So, Flannery took it upon herself to start

investigating the relationship between the

two. “My goal was never to be a scientist; it

was to be a better physician,” Flannery said.

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF ROBERT LISAK VIA YALE SCHOOL OF MEDICINE

Dr. Claire Flannery (right) leads a research team examining changes in the uterine lining as related to the

development of uterine cancer.

endometrial cancer. She is studying

how obese women with endometrial

cancer may differ in their underlying

metabolism. In particular, she is

examining the hypothesis that women

with obesity have a different intrauterine

environment, and that their placenta

works as a metabolic organ. “The fetus in

turn will have long term risk of metabolic

disease, such as diabetes. We found that

the placenta in obese women has a higher

level of triglycerides (fat), but the real

question is: what regulates it? Since we

know the placenta has insulin receptors,

does insulin actually regulate the fat

content in the placenta?” Anam said.

The lab also looks to mice as a model,

particularly those that have become

overweight with time. The researchers aim

to study how the mouse endometrium

changes in terms of metabolism and DNA

damage. Kate Kelly, an undergraduate

research assistant at the lab, has been

analyzing mouse uteri at the molecular level,

to discover how exposure to the hormone

estrogen affects mice that are resistant

to insulin, in the hopes of untangling

yet another connection among different

components of the endocrine system.

“These mice were exposed to estradiol,

a potent form of estrogen for six months,

and I’m currently looking for markers of

pre-pre-cancer, including differential RNA

expression and DNA damage,” she said.

When asked about her favorite aspects

of her research program, Flannery said,

The Research

Flannery describes her lab as a cyclical

project. Her lab collects tissue samples from

a patient, studies this tissue on a molecular

level, and then returns to the patient

in the clinic with insights. By studying

numerous cells under a microscope,

members of the lab begin to have a sense

of what is normal and abnormal. Through

this understanding, they are able to

contrast the normal cell to its reaction to

hormones. Flannery also sequences the

DNA and RNA in the tissue, looking for

a genetic marker that indicates “pre-precancer,”

or endometrial hyperplasia—

an overgrowth of cells that have not yet

become cancerous. Endometrial cancer

develops over decades. By looking at a

twenty-year-old woman’s tissue, Flannery

can predict whether the patient will have

endometrial cancer in thirty years.

Anika Anam, an endocrinology fellow

at the lab, works with human samples

to understand the pathophysiology of

IT’S THE

UNEXPECTED RESULT

THAT SHAKES MY

THEORIES AND

MAKES ME TAKE THE

RESEARCH IN A NEW

DIRECTION.


OB-GYN

FOCUS

MY GOAL WAS NEVER TO BE

A SCIENTIST; IT WAS TO BE A

BETTER PHYSICIAN.

“It’s the unexpected result that shakes my

theories and makes me take the research

in a new direction.” For Flannery, this

process of pondering new hypotheses

is addictive. Her ultimate goal as a

researcher is to make endometrial cancer

a preventable disease. “This is going to

take my entire career and lifespan as well

as the careers and lifespans of some of

my mentees,” Flannery said.

The Women-led Lab

One of the most interesting aspects

of Flannery’s lab is the all-female

environment. All of the lab’s members at

the moment are women, and, since they

are studying obstetrics, all of the patients

are women too. Her research’s focus on

obstetrics and endocrinology has led

Flannery to inadvertently surround herself

with female peers and create a welcoming

environment for women scientists, which

is often rare. “It wasn’t a specific decision

on my behalf; it was because women are the

majority of the people who show interest in

working in the lab,” Flannery said.

Flannery believes that what led the lab to

become all-female was that women were

the ones most interested in her area of

research. “There have been men in the lab,

and I look forward to them joining again,”

she emphasized. “I am open to all gender

identities.” She also hypothesized that it

had something to do with her mentoring

style. In medicine specifically, the

importance of a mentor who aligns with

your research interests and learning style is

immeasurable. According to Flannery, she

believes she has created an environment

conducive to learning, where members

support each other instead of competing.


Anam praised Claire’s strengths as

a mentor. “Women tend to be more

cognizant of other people’s perspectives,”

Anam said. “I’ve been working in the

lab since July 2017, and I’ve found it to

be a very supportive environment.” She

also emphasized that one of the greatest

strengths of the lab was the collaborative

relationship between members. “We do

a lot of cross-teaching on all levels; it is

not hierarchical.” After learning about

the lab’s research from a second-year

medical student, Anam understood

that Clare helped foster this

collaborative environment. “Clare

has been incredibly open and

supportive,” Anam said. “She

thinks very broadly, which

is one thing I struggle with

because I’m very detailoriented.”

Kelly explains that

Flannery chooses the

lab members, evaluating

how each individual

will contribute to the lab

environment. Kelly also

emphasized the strong

relationships between

lab members: “Each

one of us is working

on our own projects,

but the collaboration

is constant,” Kelly

said. In her previous

lab, Kelly felt she was

often compared to male

counterparts or seen

as “less of a scientist”

because of her gender.

Her experience in

the Flannery lab is

incredibly different. Members of the lab

understand the importance of sticking

together, as women in STEM have all

faced discrimination at some point in

their careers. “I have worked in scientific

settings before where I felt the need to

prove my value as a scientist to other

people, especially men, over and over

again,” she said.

The researchers in the Flannery lab

are particularly proud of their work on

the clinical front, which requires that

researchers be especially aware of their

subjects’ needs. The women believe

that being an all-female lab has given

them an advantage in understanding

and supporting their (female) patients,

contributing to a safe environment where

they feel comfortable being treated.

The part of Flannery’s research that

brings her the most pleasure is watching

“people develop in their ideas and launch

in their own careers.” For Flannery, success

is defined by mentoring a future generation

and watching them blossom as they discover

their own passions. ■


SPECIAL

Past

A TIMELINE

OF FIRSTS

Recognizing brave female

pioneers in STEM

BY CYNTHIA LIN

1732

After becoming one of the first

women to receive a degree

from an institute of higher

education, LAURA BASSI

(1711–1778) became the first

salaried female professor in

the world. She taught at the

University of Bologna until her

death, and during her time at

the institution, she was also

appointed the chair of the

Physics department.

1754

Throughout our early education, we

were taught the history of science,

along with the names of pioneers

who made groundbreaking

discoveries and developed methods

of science that we continue to use

to this day. Often missing among

these names are the women: women

who had the ability to become

great scientists yet were barred

from education; women who made

groundbreaking discoveries and

contributions but weren’t credited

for their work. This (by no means

inclusive) timeline of the first

women in STEM will bring to

mind many familiar names, as

well as many new names, in order

to acknowledge the courage and

passion it takes to break any

barrier for the first time. ■

ART BY SARAH TENG

While working as a teacher, ELIZABETH

BLACKWELL (1821–1920) noticed a dire

need for female doctors, so in 1849, she

became the first licensed female doctor in

America. Later in her life, Blackwell opened her

own practice, started a medical college in New

York, and became a professor of gynecology at

the London School of Medicine for Women.

1894

c.1793

Though she lived in the highly conservative society

of the Qing dynasty, the self-taught WANG

ZHENYI (1768–1797) became an accomplished

astronomer, mathematician, and poet. She became

the first individual in China to correctly explain

lunar and solar eclipses. Through writing various

textbooks, she dedicated her life to providing

education to those who were traditionally denied it.

1849

YALE GRADUATE SCHOOLS allowed women to enroll for the first time in

1892. Of the twenty-three women who joined, seven successfully received their

doctorates, and two of them were in STEM fields. Margaretta Palmer received

a PhD in mathematics and became a pioneering astronomer, working at the

Yale Observatory until her death. Charlotte Fitch Roberts received a PhD in

chemistry and took up professorship at Wellesley upon graduation.

Inspired by Laura Bassi’s achievements,

DOROTHEA ERXELEBEN (1715–

1762) fought for her right to study

medicine, and eventually became the

first licensed female doctor in the

world. Much of her life was dedicated to

advocating for the education of women.

1843

Through her collaboration with Charles

Babbage, ADA LOVELACE (1815–1852)

wrote the first algorithm for his “Analytical

Engine,” making Lovelace the world’s first

computer programmer. Her novel idea

that computers could be used for more

than calculations was vastly ahead of her

time and would go on to frame the basis

of modern-day programming.

1864

REBECCA LEE CRUMPLER

(1831–1895) was the first

African-American woman

to receive a medical degree.

Working as a nurse first, she was

recommended by the doctors

she worked with to attend

medical school. In 1866, she

joined other Black physicians in

caring for freed slaves.


Past

SPECIAL

1969

1942

During the war, MARY G. ROSS

(1908–2008) was hired as a

mathematician for Lockheed

Corporation in California. During

this time, she became the first

Indigenous woman to receive

a professional certification in

engineering. She continued to work

for Lockheed until 1973, where she

worked on preliminary designs for

satellites, manned space flight, and

developed ballistic missile systems.

1993

Through her mission aboard the

Discovery space shuttle, ELLEN

OCHOA (1962–) became the

first Hispanic woman to go to

space. She embarked on three

more missions during her career,

and she is currently the Director

of the Johnson Space Center.

In 1969, YALE COLLEGE allowed women to enroll

for the first time. Two hundred and thirty women

enrolled as freshmen at Yale, and another cohort of

women enrolled as transfer students. The women who

transferred as juniors graduated in 1971, becoming

the first women to graduate from Yale College.

The first woman to be awarded a Nobel

Prize, MARIE CURIE (1867–1934) was

honored in 1903 for her work with her husband

on spontaneous radiation. After her husband’s

death, Marie took his place as professor of

general physics at the University of Paris,

receiving a second Nobel Prize in 1911. She

dedicated much of the rest of her life supporting

research on radium at various institutes.


1903

1958

FLORENCE BINGHAM KINNE

(1863–1929) was hired to teach

at the Pathology Department at

the School of Medicine, becoming

the first female instructor at

Yale. When she was hired, she was

likely to have been one of the only

women in the entire School of

Medicine, since the first female

students were admitted in 1916.

In 1958, MARY JACKSON (1921–2005)

became the first woman of color

engineer at NASA. After publishing

various papers during her two decades

there, Jackson became the Federal

Women’s Program Manager at NASA’s

Langley Research Center, where she

helped to promote the hiring and

promotions of female mathematicians,

engineers, and scientists.

1905

1983

2014

MARYAM MIRZAKHANI (1977–2017)

was the first woman to be awarded

the Fields Medal (the “Nobel Prize

of Mathematics”) for her work in the

dynamics and geometry of Riemann

surfaces. Before she passed, Maryam was

a professor at Stanford University.

As a crewmember and flight

engineer of the Challenger STS-7

shuttle, SALLY RIDE (1951–2012)

became the first female American

astronaut. She participated in two

missions. After her retirement

from NASA, Ride worked to

improve science education for girls

and founded Sally Ride Science, a

non-profit that supports young

women in STEM.


SPECIAL

Past

WOMEN IN STEM

When you think of famous scientists, who comes to mind? Maybe

Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, or Isaac Newton—names you

were first introduced to in your middle school science class. But

where are the women? According to a 2019 report by the UNESCO Institute for

Statistics, only twenty-nine percent of workers in research and development

are women. Despite that, women are behind many key innovations that

improve our everyday lives. Here, we highlight some famous leaders in STEM

whose work we use every day.

BY ARUSHI DOGRA

CATHLEEN LIANG

ART BY MILA COLIZZA

LYNN CONWAY (1938–) is a transgender computer scientist and electrical engineer.

Conway attended MIT, only to drop out due to mental health issues related to her

gender dysphoria. Later, she completed her education at Columbia University.

During the 1970s, Conway was responsible for very large-scale integration (VLSI),

which revolutionized efficient circuit design, and invented microchips that serve as

the foundation for modern-day cell phones. Recently, it was also revealed that she

made significant contributions to computer architecture and design as part of IBM’s

Advanced Computing Systems research team in the 1960s, before she was fired for

undergoing a gender transition. Conway kept this information under wraps for years,

fearing that she would have to restart her career again if she revealed the existence of

her previous identity.

Both beauty and brains, HEDY LAMARR (1914–2000) was an actress regarded as

both “the world’s most beautiful woman” and “the mother of Wi-Fi.” While most know

Lamarr for her many leading roles under MGM Studios and Warner Bros., she was a

prolific inventor whose creations include traffic lights for movement-disabled people

and modifications to the Concorde supersonic aircraft. Most notably, along with

colleague George Antheil, Lamarr pioneered a “frequency-hopping” communication

system that prevented Axis powers from hijacking torpedoes during World War II.

This technology is the underlying basis for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth today. Lamarr was

inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014.


Past

SPECIAL

WHOSE DISCOVERIES WE USE EVERY DAY

The unsung heroines who used science to build the world we know today

GLADYS WEST (1930–) is an African-American mathematician who has spent her

career as a public-school math teacher, a human computer for the U.S. Air Force, and

an innovative technological pioneer. Only the second Black woman to be hired at the

Naval Surface Warfare Center at Dahlgren, West was an integral part of the effort to

develop the modern Global Positioning System (GPS). She was able to use satellite data

to program a computer to detect the irregular geoid shape of the Earth with increasing

precision, a model that sits at the core of GPS technology. She has also conducted

award-winning research on the motion of Pluto relative to Neptune. In 2018, West was

inducted into the Space and Missiles Pioneers Hall of Fame, one of the highest possible

honors presented by the Air Force Space Command.

After its first case appeared in 1959, Haemophilus influenzae type b bacteria (Hib)

became the leading cause of meningitis in children under five, with more than twentythousand

cases a year. With both a high mortality and morbidity rate, an estimated

seven million lives would have been lost by 2020 without RACHEL SCHNEERSON’S

Hib vaccine. Schneerson (1932–) was a senior investigator at the National Institutes of

Health from 1988 until 2012. There, Schneerson and her colleague John Robbins would

create not only the Hib vaccine, but also the first conjugate vaccine, an advancement

that made vaccines both safer and more effective than before. Shortly after the Hib

vaccine was available worldwide, mortality from Hib dropped by as much as ninetyfive

percent. The conjugate vaccine technology Schneerson developed would also be

used for the creation of the pneumococcal and meningococcal vaccines.

MAMIE PHIPPS CLARK (1917–1983) was a social psychologist who specialized

in child development. The first African-American female to earn a psychology

doctorate from Columbia University, Clark’s research was centered around race

issues in very young children. Today, she is most known for her iconic “Doll Test,”

which revealed that the majority of Black preschool children preferred white dolls

over Black dolls. Clark’s study showed that students in racially mixed schools feel

more distress due to internalized racism than do those from segregated schools.

Her findings, which suggested that desegregation of schools could lead to healthy

child development, were used as key evidence in the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board

of Education Supreme Court case.



BY THE NUMBERS:

WOMEN IN STEM

Education: “The Leaky Pipeline”

• 49.2% of women who originally intend to major in Science

and Engineering as a first-year switch to a non-STEM major,

compared to 32.5% of men.

• Nationally, women make up 57.3% of bachelor’s degree

recipients but only 38.6% of STEM bachelor’s degree recipients.

• At Yale, in 2019, women made up 47.5% of bachelor’s degree

recipients but only 39.2% of STEM bachelor’s degree recipients.

• Women represent 57.3% of undergraduates but only 38.6% of

STEM undergraduates, or about two-thirds of the expected

amount based on undergraduate enrollment. Moreover,

underrepresented minority women represent 16.6% of

undergraduates but only 9.16% of STEM undergraduates,

or approximately one-half of the expected amount based on

undergraduate enrollment.

• As women move through the “leaky pipeline” of higher

education, they become increasingly underrepresented.

While women receive 50.1% of STEM bachelor’s degrees, they

only receive 44.3% of master’s degrees and 41% of doctorate

degrees. Subsequently, they comprise 36% of postdoctoral

fellows and 29% of employees.

• For underrepresented minority women, once again, the

disparities are even more severe. Underrepresented minority

women receive 13.3% of STEM bachelor’s degrees, 12.4% of

master’s degrees, and 6.8% of doctorate degrees, and they

make up 4.8% of the workforce.

Pushing Women out of STEM

• Only 37% of STEM professionals portrayed in the media

are women.

• In science education materials, 75% of adults depicted in a

science profession were men, and only 25% were women.

• When asked to draw a scientist, only 28% of kids (boys

and girls) drew a female scientist. Boys almost always drew

men, and girls were twice as likely to draw men as they were

to draw women.

• This difference got worse with age, as 70% of 6-year-old girls

drew a woman, whereas only 25% of 16-year-old girls did.

• 50% of women in STEM jobs have said that they have

experienced discrimination in the workplace.


BY ISHANI SINGH

ART BY SOPHIA ZHAO

Employment

Present

SPECIAL

What do statistics

reveal ab o u t o n g o i n g

gender disparities?

• Women represent 52% of the college-educated workforce, but

only 29% of the science and engineering workforce.

• BIWOC are even more underrepresented:

- Latina/Hispanic women make up only 2.3% of the science

and engineering workforce

- Indigenous women make up only 0.07%

- Black women represent only 2.5%

• Women hold 76% of all healthcare jobs but represent only 40.8%

of physicians and surgeons.

• Women make up 34.5% of STEM faculty at academic institutions.

- Black women make up only 1.5%,

- Latina/Hispanic women 2.0%, and

- Indigenous women 0.08%

• Women only make up 28.2% of tenured STEM faculty.

- Black women make up 1.4%

- Hispanic/Latina women make up 1.3%

- Indigenous women make up 0.04%

• At Yale, 38.3% of STEM faculty are women, and 17.6% of tenured

STEM faculty are women.

- 10% (2/20) of Directors of Undergraduate Studies in STEM

departments are women

- 11% (2/18) of STEM department chairs are women

• In STEM occupations, women earn 81.6 cents to the

dollar of men.

• In healthcare occupations, women earn 71.7 cents to the

dollar of men.

• Of the 616 Nobel Laureates in Physics, Science, and Medicine

and Physiology from 1901–2019, only 19 were women.

• A study of NIH funding from 2006–2017 found that female firsttime

principal investigators received a median grant of about

$40,000 less than their male counterparts, when controlling for

research potential.

https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/2017/nsf17310/data.cfm

https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf19304/data

https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/datacenter/InstitutionProfile.aspx?unitid=130794

https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11.htm

http://catalog.yale.edu/ycps/majors-in-yale-college/

https://data.census.gov/cedsci/table?q=S2411&tid=ACSST1Y2019.

S2411&hidePreview=true

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/lists/nobel-prize-awarded-women/

htts:// doi.org/10.1001/jama.2018.21944

https://seejane.org/research-informs-empowers/portray-her/

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0165037

https://www.edutopia.org/article/keeping-girls-stem-3-barriers-3-solutions

https://www.edutopia.org/article/50-years-children-drawing-scientists

https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2018/01/09/women-and-men-in-stemoften-at-odds-over-workplace-equity/


FOCUS

Math

HEE OH

Coming Full Circle

BY MIRILLA ZHU

ART BY KAREN LIN

On a snowy February

evening, thirty

u n d e r g r a d u a t e s

gather inside a brightly lit

classroom on the first floor of

Leet Oliver Memorial Hall. At

the front of the room is Hee

Oh, the Abraham Robinson

Professor of Mathematics at

Yale, drawing crisp white circles

on the board with a brand-new

stick of Hagoromo chalk. By

the time she turns around, she

has traced out three perfect

circles, each touching two

others at a single point.


Math

FOCUS

Between every three mutually tangent circles, there are

exactly two circles tangent to all three of them.

Oh studies Apollonian circle packings,

which are created by filling the space

between three mutually tangent circles

with successively smaller tangent circles. As

she draws the smaller circles on the board,

she talks about her fascination with circle

packings, connecting them to centuries-old

theorems of Greek geometers and to recent

developments in hyperbolic geometry. The

students listen with undivided attention,

captivated by her every word.

Twenty-eight years earlier, Oh had

been sitting in the classroom next door,

similarly entranced as a grey-haired

professor lectured about connections

between geometry, number theory, and

dynamics. At the time, Oh was a firstyear

graduate student at Yale who had

just arrived from Korea; the professor,

Gregory Margulis, was a Fields medalist

who had come to Yale the previous year.

Oh had taken a number of math courses

as an undergraduate at Seoul National

University, but Margulis’s class was the

first time she saw how the three topics

could be brought together in such

unexpected ways. When it came time to

choose a thesis advisor, Oh decided that

she wanted to work with Margulis.

The problem Margulis gave Oh was

to show that a certain class of discrete

subgroups were arithmetic, meaning that

they could only be constructed using

number-theoretic methods. Margulis

suggested an approach that would prove

the result for some specific cases, but

he was surprised to find that, by the

time she had finished graduate school,

she had proven arithmeticity in nearly

all cases using a result called Ratner’s

theorem. According to Margulis, Oh

worked exceptionally hard. “It’s difficult

to predict what will happen with any

student in ten or fifteen years,” Margulis

said. “But even at that time, it was clear

that she was capable of coming up with

the kind of ideas that are necessary to

become a leader in the field.”

Despite her mathematical acumen, Oh

hadn’t always intended to be a professor.

When she first began studying math

in college, she thought that being a

mathematician meant working alone

on obscure problems, as if she could

disappear from the world and no one

else would notice. Halfway through her

undergraduate studies, she felt that she

wanted her life to have more purpose.

“If I spent my time helping the weak and

oppressed, I thought that would be a

meaningful existence,” she said.

This conviction led Oh to pursue a

calling as a social activist, organizing

protests against the military dictatorship

that had taken over the South Korean

government in the mid-1980s. Oh recalls

standing in the front line of student

demonstrations, facing off against a wall

of armed police. At one point, she was

knocked unconscious on the street. But,

in spite of her sacrifices, she wasn’t able

to make significant progress on the social

issues she had set out to solve, at least by

her own standards. “There were no single

bulletproof solutions like the ones I was

used to in math,” she said. “I liked the

clarity of mathematics, and I missed it.”

After a year of working as an activist,

Oh decided to return to studying math.

She credits the experience of standing

firm during protests with giving her

the persistence necessary to reach key

points of her academic career, from

finishing her PhD in 1997 to navigating

her first positions at Oklahoma State, the

Hebrew University, and Princeton. By

the time she received a tenure offer from

the California Institute of Technology

in 2003, she had started a family with

her husband with a two-year-old son,

and a daughter later to come. Once she

became a mother, her respect for other

female mathematicians grew immensely.

“I didn’t know what they were going

through before,” she said.

Oh learned about circle packings

in 2007 from Peter Sarnak, a number

theorist at Princeton she met while

working as an assistant professor.

Sarnak had been trying to count circles

in circle packings that were no smaller

than a given radius, having realized

that the task was equivalent to counting

points of an orbit on an infinite-volume

hyperbolic manifold. Because Oh was



FOCUS

Math

working on similar counting problems

in finite-volume spaces, he thought she

would be well-equipped to look into the

problem. One of Sarnak’s former students,

Alex Kontorovich, had been trying to

understand the structure of this space

using partial differential equations, but Oh

saw that they could use an approach from

representation theory instead. Oh and

Kontorovich spent the next several months

working out the details of their proof,

encountering roadblocks and false leads

along the way. Nevertheless, they pursued

the problem with what Kontorovich calls

a “keen tenacity,” and by the end of 2008,

they had arrived at a solution they felt

confident enough to share.

Oh gave the first talk on their results in

October of that year, and she later wrote a

paper with Kontorovich, which would go

on to be published in one of the leading

journals of mathematics. Oh describes

the process of finding the solution like

climbing up a mountain—sometimes she

wasn’t sure if she was looking at the right

mountain, or if there was a path to the

summit at all. “You often go halfway up,

only to find that the path doesn’t take

you where you thought it would,” she

said. But once she and Kontorovich had

completed the proof, the implications of

what they had done became clear. They

had made it to the top—and they couldn’t

help but marvel at the view.

The techniques Oh used opened up new

avenues of research, leading to numerous

collaborations through which she sought

to investigate related properties of circle

packings. For her work on circle packings,

Oh received several national honors and

awards—the Satter Prize, a Guggenheim

Fellowship, and the Ho-Am Prize, the

last of which described her work as a

“technical tour de force” that brought

together an interplay of ideas from

different areas of mathematics. Among

the distinctions was an offer of a faculty

position at Yale, which she accepted in

2013 to become the university’s first

tenured female math professor.

In some ways, Oh’s career has come

full circle since returning to Yale.

She now runs the Group Actions and

Dynamics seminar that Margulis started

thirty years ago, and her office is located

across the hall from the classroom where

her interest in geometry and dynamics

was first piqued. For the past several

years, Oh has also mentored graduate

students, who have become her frequent

collaborators and coauthors. “Watching

them grow mathematically has been very

rewarding,” she said. “By proving some

of the conjectures I’ve proposed, they’ve

realized my own mathematical dreams.”

Wenyu Pan, who completed her thesis

under Oh’s supervision in 2018, recalls

how Oh helped her develop the same

mathematical confidence that she says

Oh exhibits in her own research. “Hee

challenged me to solve some really

difficult problems, like the ones she

herself would solve,” Pan said. When Pan

couldn’t figure out one of Oh’s problems

the first time around, Oh would give her

an easier problem to solve, or encourage

her to discuss ideas with other

mathematicians until she was ready to

try again. “Even at my lowest points, she

just kept encouraging me,” she said.

Perhaps one reason for Oh’s

encouragement is that there are so few

women studying math in the first place.

About one-third of math graduate

students in the United States are female,

but at Yale, the gender disparity is even

more stark—only one of the thirty-two

PhD candidates in the math department

last year was a woman. There is no clearcut

fix to the gender imbalance—the issue

more closely resembles the social

science problems that Oh

dealt with as an activist

than the math

problems

thinks about

now—but

she

mentoring graduate students and

conducting research are ways that Oh is

trying to approximate a solution. “If you

see female mathematicians doing great

research around you, you begin to feel

that you can be one of them too,” she said.

As a graduate student, Oh had been

inspired by the work of a woman named

Marina Ratner—the ergodic theorist

who proved the central result she used in

her thesis. Now, a younger generation of

students is looking up to Oh. For Jingyi

Cui, a former math and economics major

who took Real Analysis with Oh last

spring, Oh was the first female professor

outside the humanities she had during her

four years at Yale. “It was so refreshing to

see someone who looked like me address

a room full of students,” said Cui, who

started her PhD in economics this fall.

“It gives me motivation to imagine that I

could be like that one day.”

Cui recalls seeing Oh in the dining

hall, eating lunch with other math

professors before class. What stood out

mostly clearly to her, Cui said, was how

self-assured Oh had been at the table

full of men. She contributed frequently

to the conversation, and when she

spoke, they listened. In that moment,

Cui was reminded of why she had

chosen to pursue a career in academia.

“She showed us that the ceiling could be

broken,” Cui said. ■

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

MIRILLA ZHU

MIRILLA ZHU is a rising junior in Saybrook College majoring in

mathematics. Besides writing for YSM, she enjoys reading poetry and

exploring New Haven in search of the city’s best bubble tea.

THE AUTHOR WOULD LIKE TO THANK Professor Oh for her time and

generosity with the interviews, in addition to sharing her knowledge

of measure theory, fractal dimensions, and drawing the perfect circle.

FURTHER READING

Kontorovich, A., & Oh, H. (2011). Apollonian circle packings and closed

horospheres on hyperbolic 3-manifolds. Journal of the American

Mathematical Society, 24(1), 603-648.

Mackenzie, D. (2010). A Tisket, a Tasket, an Apollonian Gasket.

American Scientist, 98(1), 10-14.


HOW

WE

Astrophysics

GOT

FOCUS

HERE

AND

WHERE WE

ARE

GOING

Meg Urry’s

Insights into

the Universe

(including

Inequality in

STEM)

BY

ALEXANDRA

HASLUND-GOURLEY

& EAMON GOUCHER

ART BY

CATHERINE ZHANG


A

few million light years away, a black

hole at the center of a galaxy spins

at immense speeds, turning matter

into light; on the screen in front of us, the

scientist who figured that out made an edgy

joke about how terrible adulthood is. We sat

(virtually) in Professor Meg Urry’s office,

listening intently as she tells stories about her

career, her research, and her life. Hanging

on the wall were three framed pictures,

including a black and white portrait of who

appears to be Isaac Newton. Seems fitting

for one of the most acclaimed astrophysics

experts in the world. Throughout our

discussion, the conversation kept returning

to the same thought—what is the driving

force behind science? For Urry, it is about

bringing different ideas and perspectives

into conversation with one another. It is

about diversity and representation—who

is at the table, what they brought, and how

they got there. Urry’s own journey is a case

study into the sociology of science.

Urry was born in St. Louis, MO, in 1955,

but spent most of her childhood in West

Lafayette, IN. Her father, a professor of

chemistry at Purdue University, was Urry’s

first real exposure to the field of academia. “If

I had to pick one reason why I am a professor,

it’s because of my family—I knew what that

job was, I knew it existed,” Urry reflected.

She pauses before going on to mention

that science was not her favorite subject

growing up—it felt too static, too centered on

memorization rather than deep learning.

During her freshman year at Tufts

University, Urry enrolled in an introductory

physics course that nearly succeeded in

deterring Urry from pursuing a major in

physics. Not only was Urry the only woman

enrolled in the course, but she found that

her professor tended to obfuscate rather

than clarify what should have been simple

concepts. The first semester of familiar

Newtonian physics passed uneventfully, but,

as the curriculum slid into the unintuitive


FOCUS

Astrophysics

world of electromagnetism, Urry faced the

first of many trials of her academic career.

“I absolutely bombed the first exam second

semester of freshman year—I got the

worst grade on anything in my life,” Urry

chuckled. “I think at that moment I had a

choice. Do I say, ‘This isn’t for me’ because

I was plenty good at other things. But then

I thought, ‘You know, this cannot be that

hard. Thousands and thousands of people

have succeeded in learning physics.’”

For Urry, this epiphany was a step

through a barrier that even today holds

many people back from pursuing science.

She recognized that her performance on

the test had nothing to do with her innate

capabilities or gender—it was merely a

reflection of the teaching style and her

studying methods. Propelled by this

realization, she began to teach herself the

material directly from the textbook. By

the end of the semester, electromagnetism

began to make more sense and suddenly, “It

just clicked. I finally saw how this all works

and why. Once I mastered that, I started to

see physics as more fun,” Urry remarked.

Following this passion, Urry spent

the summer after her junior year gazing

across the universe at the National Radio

Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville,

Virginia. Even through our Zoom video

call, Urry’s excitement for research was

palpable. She lit up as she recalled her first

research project where she made her first

significant astronomical discovery. Urry’s

survey required her to painstakingly take

punch cards with specific coordinates to

parts of the sky, find the corresponding

filing cabinet, pull out huge sheets of

photographic paper, and meticulously

analyze the images produced by radio

sources from the distant universe. After

peering through hundreds of images of

the night sky, Urry found an anomaly:

two identical astronomical bodies

situated impossibly close to each other.

Unbeknownst to her at the time, Urry

had discovered the first example of

gravitational lensing. Yet, when asked

about the experience, Urry humbly said,

“That was new knowledge—coming from

a few measly photons that came off our

way. Suddenly, I realized that this was what

I wanted to do.” That summer gave her the

confidence and intellectual motivation

to pursue astronomy in graduate school

at Johns Hopkins University. At JHU,

she found herself the only woman in the

class—again. But she never thought much

of it at the time, noting, “The fact that it

was all men… that was just everywhere.”

It was not until her postdoctoral

fellowship at MIT that Urry realized the

role sexism played in STEM. Towards

the end of Urry’s fellowship at MIT,

she applied for a permanent faculty

position at the institute but was rejected.

Her colleague who ultimately got the

job reassured her that there were many

other opportunities because, due to

affirmative action, “Everyone has to

hire women,” an idea Urry rejected. This

sentiment was incredibly unsettling for

Urry. “It just felt terrible. You never want

to feel like you had an advantage or that

someone gave you a leg up,” she said.

This experience, along with many

others, has inspired Urry to try to

understand and untangle the intertwining

strands of history, culture, sexism, and

racism that have resulted in a lack of

diversity and representation in science.

Just like in a physics problem, Urry has

identified the force that has shaped

the field: a gravitational pull towards a

perpetuation of similar scientists. “We

believe that [selecting faculty] is about

[one’s] publications and their stature

and the quality of their ideas, but also,

it’s about our comfort level with them

and our sense that they are really good

people—which often turns into an issue

of self-validation. Are they like me? Did

they go to a similar school? It ends up

being a homogenizing process,” she said.

In 2001, Urry accepted a faculty position

at Yale. She knew from the very beginning

that she wanted to teach introductory

physics, helping students make that

critical first leap into the world of physics.

For many students—particularly students

from groups that have been historically

underrepresented in science 1 —this

“barrier moment,” as Urry calls it,

completely turns them off from pursuing

physics. The central question then follows:

how do we eliminate this barrier? Urry’s

goal in- and outside of the classroom has

always been to engage students and make

physics personal, interesting, and, most

importantly, accessible.

For instance, she has continually

experimented with her teaching style,

notably incorporating a flipped classroom

structure, so that her students get a deeper,

more intuitive sense of the physical world.

It has been a few years now since Urry has

taught introductory physics. She currently

teaches a course entitled “Expanding Ideas

of Time and Space,” which she told us is one

of the most-requested first-year seminars

offered. As she said this, Urry leaned back,

threw up her hands, and put on her humblebrag

face—we could not help but laugh.

1

This is the institutional jargon commonly used to describe the lack of representation of historically marginalized groups. However, this terminology in itself is passively problematic

as it refuses to place any accountability for the people, practices, and policies that marginalized these groups.


Outside of the classroom, Urry works

tirelessly to make science accessible to all

people. Urry is a regular science contributor

for CNN and has written pieces on NASA,

astrophysics, and the experience of women

in STEM. In 2017, she helped jump-start

the Global Teaching Project, an EdTech

initiative dedicated to bringing advanced

coursework to “rural and underserved

communities.” Since then, the project—

currently focused on in the Mississippi Delta

region—has continued to grow, reaching

over four hundred students to date.

Urry has also enacted waves of change

within the Physics department at Yale. Serving

as chair from 2007 to 2013, her primary focus

was on addressing equity issues within the

department. Urry’s legacy in this area cannot

be understated. When she arrived at Yale in

2001, she was the only female physics faculty

member. Now there are seven women faculty

members, six with tenure. It is clear though,

that these changes have not been easy to enact.

Urry told us that after continuously being

labeled “overly ambitious” and having her

intelligence questioned that “there have been

days when I’ve gone into my office and cried.

I want people to know, though, that if you

power through bad times with confidence,

that things will even out. After all, in the end,

it’s about the work you do, what you learn.”


Even from a cursory look at her research,

it is clear that Urry has stayed true to this

resolve. Studying the evolution of galaxies

over the last twelve billion years, Urry has

made incredible leaps forward in the field of

astronomy. By analyzing spectra from distant

galaxies, Urry and her team have identified

the rate at which the matter accumulated

around black holes is converted into light—

Astrophysics

We need more conflict,

more argument, more

difference. That’s why

excellence in science

is so closely tied to

diversity. All kinds,

different paths, people

who are not the same.

proving that black holes are spinning at

their maximum possible speed. This is no

small finding. It implies that the growth of

black holes comes from matter falling into

them, which tends to spin them up, rather

than from mergers of big black holes, which

on average should decrease the spin.

Science is as much about data as it is

about people. “The most power in science

comes from the clash of ideas. Every big

discovery is a paradigm shift. To get there,

you have to reject the current paradigm. We

need more conflict, more argument, more

difference. That’s why excellence in science

is so closely tied to diversity. All kinds,

different paths, people who are not the

same,” Urry explained. From a humanistic

and a scientific perspective, equity and

diversity are essential. “What would [life]

be like if we had really opened the doors

and made it possible for everyone to thrive

[from the very beginning]?” Urry muses.

Although she mourns the generations

of women’s and other underrepresented

people’s voices that went unsupported and

unheard in the scientific community, Urry

is clearly excited for the future of science.

Through the thousands of students that

she has inspired and guided, she is helping

to bring about a new diverse generation

of scientists rich in differing perspectives,

ready to explore the universe and solve

humanity’s most pressing problems. ■

Global Teaching Project. (2019, October 18). About Us. https://www.globalteachingproject.com/about-us/

FOCUS


FOCUS

Chemistry

DIONDRA

DILWORTH

Building Polymers and Community

By Jenny Tan & Rayyan Darji

really motivates me

is being able to spread

“What

the joy and the thrill

of science,” Diondra Dilworth says.

Dilworth is a third-year PhD candidate

in chemistry at Yale, researching how

ribosomes can act as catalysts. She

is committed to spreading her love

of science and creating a supportive

scientific community for her peers

and students. Dilworth combines her

passions for science as a researcher,

mentor, and teacher to those around her.

Growing up

Before she began her research career,

Dilworth grew up in Las Vegas, NV, one

of the most popular tourist destinations

in the world, but, for Dilworth, her home.

Having grown up with two younger sisters,

Dilworth always filled the role of support

and guidance for those around her. Her

maternal grandparents, who were both

schoolteachers, were two of her biggest

inspirations. Their passion for giving back

to, teaching, and helping others is a core

value that rubbed off on Dilworth, and one

that has remained with her through her life.

In middle school, Dilworth attended

a summer camp that tackled the water

problems as a result of the desert

climate. The program integrated science

with everyday problems, and she

credits it for helping fuel her interest in

science at a young age. Altogether, these

experiences have instilled in Dilworth

an understanding of the importance that

guidance and early exposure to science

can have on a person. In addition to such

guidance, Dilworth also has had to find

confidence in herself at various stages in

her life. She believes that this confidence

ultimately paves the way for scientists to

be able to make strides in their careers.

Coming from a school district that

was ranked poorly in the United States,

it was attending the prestigious six-week

Minority Introduction to Engineering

and Science (MITES) program at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology in

high school that proved to Dilworth that

she could stand up against the brightest

STEM minds around the country. This

experience and resulting confidence

catalyzed her to apply to Harvard. The

community aspect of STEM, like the

one Dilworth experienced at MITES, is

integral towards establishing a productive

environment, but there are still certain

stereotypes that Dilworth believes

plague many STEM environments. “The

stereotype of males in the media is that

of people who are pragmatic and listen

to data, and a lot of times the stereotype

of women in the media is that they're

emotional, driven by feelings, and

irrational,” Dilworth said. From these

stereotypes, she believes that people

may get the misconception that women

aren’t useful and don’t belong as much as

men in science. But, Dilworth explains,

“You really need to think about the fact

that science is not solitary. You don’t

do science alone, and there’s a reason

they call it the scientific community.”

In fact, women who have strength in

interpersonal relationships are crucial

to bolstering communities, and the

scientific community is no exception.

She strongly believes collaboration is

key and being able to communicate with

one another is what opens the door for

exciting breakthroughs and discoveries.

Academic Work

Once Dilworth arrived at Harvard,

she discovered her interest in organic

chemistry, and explored it in many

research labs throughout the country.

During the summer after her first

year, Dilworth worked in an analytical

chemistry lab at the University of

Notre Dame with Matthew Champion

and Michael Elwell, investigating lowcost

solutions for a clinic in Kenya.

One project she worked on was a bikepowered

centrifuge, a machine with

a rapidly rotating container which

typically separates substances. With

her background in analytical chemistry,

Dilworth considered approaching

problems with organic chemistry, which

led her to join a summer program

at the University of California, San

Francisco in Ian Sieple’s research group

the following year. Seiple was Dilworth’s

first direct mentor in organic chemistry,

and her experience in his lab inspired

her to continue to pursue the study of


Chemistry

FOCUS

organic molecules. In the following

years, Dilworth joined Matthew Shair’s

group at Harvard, which focuses on

small molecules and chemical biology

to study human diseases and develop

treatments, and, the summer before

formally beginning her graduate studies

at Yale, Dilworth would work with

Alanna Schepartz, formerly at Yale,

continuing her investigation of organic

molecules in a chemical biology setting.

Dilworth is now a third-year PhD

candidate supervised by Scott Miller in the

Department of Chemistry, and a recipient

of the National Science Foundation

Graduate Research Fellowship. Her

research focuses on other uses for the

ribosome outside of protein synthesis, a

project within the multi-institutional NSF

Center for Genetically Encoded Materials.

Proteins are polymers, a molecular

structure consisting of similar units

bonded together. Three types of RNAs

work together to build proteins: messenger

RNA (mRNA), transfer RNA (tRNA),

and ribosomal RNA or ribosomes. The

mRNA is a single stranded molecule that

corresponds to the DNA. It serves as the

code for the protein. The tRNA brings

amino acids, the subunits of proteins,

to the ribosome—the site of synthesis.

Ribosomes have three parts, called the A,

P and E sites. First, a tRNA comes in at the

A-site. Then a peptide bond is catalyzed at

the P-site. Finally, the tRNA is released at

the E site. This process is also known as the

peptide bond formation. The three types

of RNAs work together to form proteins.

Dilworth focuses on ribosomes and

how they catalyze the bond formation

between the amino acids. “The idea

is, if you can bring in another source

of monomers—things that aren't

amino acids—could you then have

the ribosome facilitate other types of

transformations?” Dilworth said. Such a

question begs more considerations: the

types of monomers suitable for tRNA,

potential reactions that can happen

within the ribosomes, if there is space

for these reactions within the ribosome,

or what types of reactions can happen in

biological or aqueous conditions.

Dilworth’s research has far-reaching

applications, from medicine to materials

science. In medicine, Dilworth’s methods

could help catalyze the formation of


biologically active molecules such as

polyketides, which contain alternating

carbonyl and methylene groups.

Polyketides have proven to be promising

antibiotic candidates, but remain

challenging to synthetize from scratch

using conventional synthetic routes.

Dilworth’s method explores a new way

of producing this class of medicine. Her

research could also impact material

science. If ribosomes can help catalyze

polymer formation within a living cell,

then they would be an environmentally

friendly way of synthesizing materials and

medicine as they use less resources than

traditional methods of polymer formation.

Community

One of Dilworth’s main focuses outside

of research is to spread her love of

science. She works as an avid coordinator

within Yale’s Pathways to Science, a

program for middle and high school

students that supports exploration of

science, technology, engineering, and

math. Additionally, she currently works

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

JENNY TAN & RAYYAN DARJI

with Yale OpenLabs to hold Exploring

Science, an online weekly event that

brings in middle school students to listen

to Yale scientists talk about their research

and pathways to science. To date, over

five hundred students in the Greater New

Haven community have tuned in to the

program. “One of the parents sent us a

picture of her daughter, saying how much

she enjoyed the session, and it made my

morning,” Dilworth said.

She was also a former teaching assistant

for CHEM 174: First-Year Organic

Chemistry at Yale, where her famous study

guides have inspired prospective scientists

to pursue careers in research. “I know

what I’m doing is really cool, and it's really

cool to pay it forward,” Dilworth said.

However, as exemplified in Dilworth’s

own experience, not every place is plagued

by those stereotypes. The demographics in

the Miller Lab, in which there are currently

more women graduate students than

men, give her hope. Seeing that reality in

day to day life encourages her and shows

her how there is a place for women to

excel in STEM, unequivocally falsifying

the stereotypes. What’s important now,

Dilworth explained, is “having that balance

becomes a standard and not an anomaly.”

Even after accomplishing so much

already, there is much to come from

Dilworth. She is excited about the future,

her research, and how she can continue

to be a positive impact on others.

Throughout her career, she has stayed true

to recognizing the importance of having

self-confidence, building a collaborative

community, and remembering to help

others, all of which are characteristics

she plans to continue to carry with her

along her scientific journey. ■

A R T B Y A N A S T H A S I A S H I L O V

JENNY TAN is a sophomore in Saybrook majoring in Chemistry. She is from northern Virginia

just outside of Washington D.C. Outside of school, she likes baking and listening to music.

RAYYAN DARJI is a freshman in Grace Hopper from Tallahassee, Florida. Outside of school, he

enjoys watching and playing a variety of sports and trying new ethnic foods.

THE AUTHORS WOULD LIKE TO THANK Diondra for taking the time to talk to us about her

experiences and insights about the STEM community.


FOCUS

Medicine

DR. SHARA

A

Doctor

Who

Writes

BY

DHRUV PATEL &

MATTHEW FAN

YURKIEWICZ

Dr. Shara Yurkiewicz (MCDB ’09) is a

woman of many talents. She received

her MD from Harvard Medical

School, completed her residency at Stanford,

has written about science for publications

from the Los Angeles Times to Scientific

American, and is currently a medical director

for the Northern California Home Care

Network at Providence St. Joseph Health.

Before she did any of that, however, she was

a Yalie, walking through Sterling Memorial

Library and attending Improv shows on the

weekends. Despite having a heavy workload,

Yurkiewicz made the most of her time at Yale.

Among the many things she did as an

undergraduate, she was a writer for the Yale

Scientific Magazine. Most of the articles she

wrote featured distinguished alumni and

Yale affiliates. “I really enjoyed my time at

YSM because it allowed me to interview

people who I found compelling and talk

about their stories,” Yurkiewicz said.

Yurkiewicz yearned to do more with

her experience writing for the YSM.

In the hopes of connecting the general

population to science while also helping

others improve their writing, Yurkiewicz

and her friends formed their own writing

publication, the Yale Undergraduate

Magazine. “[This magazine] was about

training writers, having workshops, and

being open and accessible [to everyone],”

she said. “I met people who, like me, didn’t

always have the confidence to do writing,

so the idea was to inspire anyone to write.”

Outside the academic year, Yurkiewicz

continued to pursue her love for writing and

publications through summer internships.

In the summer after her junior year, she

interned at Discover Magazine as a factchecker.

In this role, she became exposed to

the intricacies of scientific writing. “Blogs

were still new back then, and I was able to

do that in addition to writing for the print

magazine,” Yurkiewicz said. “After doing

that, I knew I loved science journalism.”

After graduation, Yurkiewicz started

working for the Los Angeles Times where

she interviewed scientists about their

research. “I got to interview people who

just wanted me to understand their work,”

she said. Despite having experience in

science writing, the learning curve in this

role was still steep. “It was definitely a

different feel because the deadlines were

daily. Letting go of stories was very hard

because I was used to research writing; I

was used to monthlies,” Yurkiewicz said.

Complementary to her interest in

communicating science was another deepseated

interest—Yurkiewicz had wanted

to be a doctor for as long as she could

remember. So, after a stint at the LA Times,

she enrolled at Harvard Medical School. “At

the very heart of medicine, there is you using

your knowledge and compassion to help the

body and spirit of someone else,” Yurkiewicz

said. “My most meaningful moments have

always come out of these raw and emotional

circumstances when I can walk away

knowing that I did something good today.”

At Harvard, Yurkiewicz started a blog called

This May Hurt a Bit. She wanted to document

her personal growth and explorations so

that her future self would not forget how she


Medicine

FOCUS

used to feel. “In a way, I was more cavalier,”

Yurkiewicz said. “When I was younger, I

was unafraid to put my voice out there. ”

She quickly found a home in the science

blogging community, who provided her an

escape from the echo chamber of medicine

and provide a larger lens of medicine to

the outside world. The journalistic streak

cultivated by Yurkiewicz’s experiences from

her undergraduate days still remained—

unlike other physician-writers, she strove to

connect with the general population; in doing

so, her in dispelling the misconceptions of

medicine has impacted many readers.

“I wanted to write for lay people,”

Yurkiewicz said. “I think society has a

perception of medicine, for better or for

worse. I wanted to humanize the profession.

I wanted them to connect to someone who

practices it in a way that could be relatable,

in a way that could be empathetic, in a way

that could start a conversation.”

As a medical student, Yurkiewicz wanted

to share her experiences at the bedside. Two

of her articles, “Post-Operative Check” and

“Asymmetry,” are structured around a onesided

conversation with patients who have

passed away. Not until the end does the

reader realize that the writer’s counterpart in

the dialogue is no longer living.

“I like the slow reveal of things,” she said.

“Both of those were about deaths and both of

those had huge emotional underpinning[s]

for someone who is witnessing this and doesn’t

have much control. I wanted the audience to

feel what I was feeling. I like creating scenes

where someone can really empathize with

the observer. I tried to make it observational

because it was so powerful just to be there.”

At the same time, Yurkiewicz developed a

frustration with the existing medical system.

She did not like the culture and expressed

her feelings in some of the articles she wrote.

“I was cynical. I was burnt out. I had the

same frustrations [as the patients had] with

the system and the way people were moving

through the system, the way the focus was

not always on the patient,” she said.

Writing was more than just a pastime,

however. It was an integral part of her

identity. “I saw myself as a writer who

enjoyed medicine, and medicine gave

me something to write about,” she said.

Yurkiewicz recognized the importance of

living a life of multiple passions rather than

seeing herself only as a doctor. As such,


she has made a concerted effort to actively

participate in her community.

“Being smart is great, but being kind is

the most important thing and that’s what

drives me,” she said. “The idea of being

more embedded in your community is why

I chose to practice in a community setting

and not in an academic setting.”

Currently, Yurkiewicz is working in

palliative and hospice medicine, a career

that has interested her since reading Ira

Byock’s Dying Well and volunteering as

an undergraduate at the Connecticut

Hospice in Branford, where she was

exposed to a model of care that astounded

her. “[I chose palliative care and hospice]

because it was focusing on symptoms,

focusing on quality of life,” she said. “I

liked it because it was slow medicine

[and] required patience.”

Less than a year out of her

fellowship, she is now a medical

director in the Northern California Home

Care Network. Although what she loves

most is treating patients, she has not

forgotten about some of the frustrations

she developed with the culture of medicine

in medical school; she understands that in

order to change this culture, she needs to

be able to make decisions. “If it’s not you,

it’s going to be someone else. So it might

as well be you,” she said.

As for writing, she hopes to return to it in

the near future, though she does not have a

timeline laid out. Rather than continue with

articles, she wishes to eventually publish a

book, which to her is the best way to make a

lasting impression on a general audience.

Yurkiewicz’s path in medicine shows that

one passion does not have to be sacrificed

for another, that a harmonious overlap

between the two is possible. “Medicine,”

she said, “inspired me to do the writing

that I had always loved to do.” ■

MATTHEW FAN is a first-year in Benjamin Franklin College and a prospective Molecular,

Cellular and Developmental Biology Major. In his free time, he enjoys making music with

the Yale Bands, going for hikes with friends and listening to podcasts.

DHRUV PATEL, a sophomore in Silliman, is a Neuroscience major from New York City. When

he’s not writing for the Yale Scientific, he likes to play basketball and play video games.

THE AUTHORS WOULD LIKE TO THANK Dr. Shara Yurkiewicz for graciously taking

time out of her busy schedule to do an interview. We thoroughly enjoyed learning about

her unique path in medicine.

FURTHER READING

http://www.sharayurkiewicz.com/

ART BY

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

MATTHEW FAN & DHRUV PATEL

RYAN BOSE-ROY


FEATURE

Animation

LI FE

FEATURE

Bioengineering

I N

M O

DR.

BY

LUCAS LOMAN &

JANET

AGASTYA RANA

IWASA AND

THE ANIMATION LAB

T

I O N


Open your biology textbook to

any page, and chances are that

you’ll find a diagram embedded

alongside the concept that is being

explained. Textbook authors have long

since realized how useful diagrams can

be to communicate key information and

aid understanding, but few understand

the usefulness of visual aids in biology

as well as Dr. Janet Iwasa does.

A professor at the University of

Utah, Iwasa works at the forefront of

molecular and cellular animation, a

niche of biology that she has pioneered

and devoted her career to. A virtuoso at

communicating cutting-edge research

of other scientists through

a n i m a t i o n s

of her own, Iwasa has expanded the

domain of her widely acclaimed work by

running her own research lab. Working

on projects involving visualizations of

the origin of life, HIV, and recently,

COVID-19, The Animation Lab has

been inundated with requests from

researchers to bring to life their ideas

on the workings of life itself.

Janet Iwasa describes her work

as simply another method to probe

biology. “Some people use microscopes;

I use animation software,” Iwasa said.

Her modest statement doesn’t quite

capture the gripping power of her work;

not only are her animations much more

visually alluring than your standard

biological schematic, but they

have been designed to

communicate nuanced and intricate

theoretical models effectively and

intuitively to experts in academia.

“The way you learn about molecular

biology is that it’s complex, there’s all

this stuff going on, and it’s dynamic,”

Iwasa explained. “But then the way

people visualize it is really kind of

disappointing.” Her animations, on the

other hand, encapsulate a sentiment

worth many more than just a thousand

words. “A lot of it is just about capturing

that kind of excitement that wouldn’t

necessarily come out using scientific

jargon or figures with arrows and

circles,” Iwasa remarked.

Her specialization in a niche discipline

was the result of an extraordinary

academic journey—becoming a cellular

animator is hardly a career on high

schoolers’ radar; indeed, not even in

Iwasa’s case. Her first foray into the

domain that is now her life’s work came

well into her graduate schooling,

while chugging along

the railroad from

college to graduate


Animation

FEATURE

school to post-doctoral work to

professorship.

“A lot of people go through a bit of

a slump in [graduate] school where

things just aren’t going well, and your

research isn’t going well, and you look

around and you [think] ‘What am I

doing here?’” Iwasa said. Fortunately,

her rejuvenation came in the form of

a chance encounter. The lab next door

studied kinesin, a protein responsible

for movement within the cell, and they

hired an animator to model the protein

based on their research. After seeing the

animation they produced, Iwasa became

engrossed by the potential of animation

in research. With support from her lab,

she began taking strides into the field of

animation and computer science, and

by the time she completed her PhD, her

mind was set on the unconventional

path of biological animation.

Barring the sheer complexity of her 3D

animations, Iwasa’s journey to cement

herself as an established leader in the

niche of cellular animation was not

without roadblocks. In graduate school,

she realized that she had finally stumbled

upon her intellectual passion, but she

also realized that she had no footsteps

to follow—no mentor to look up to. “The

hardest part was trying to carve a bit of

a niche within academia and research,

doing something that’s really not

considered typical,” Iwasa said.

In taking a risk to alter her career path

into one rife with uncertainty, she was

met with doubt and disapproval from

friends and colleagues who did not share

her confidence. Her temperament sealed

the deal—something that she terms her

“blinder mentality.” Iwasa added, “I’ve

definitely encountered a lot of [negative]

attitudes in science, especially being

outside of the norm.” Rather than being

daunted by the doubt from those who

did not support her, she instead chose to

listen to the encouragement from those

who did. “You just pivot, and pick and

choose what advice you listen to

and incorporate into your plans.”

Her staunch belief in the

untapped potential of cellular

animation was not without

justification. Working as a

biological animator among

the research faculty at the

University of Utah,

project requests

started coming

from all angles.

She was helping

s c i e n t i s t s

portray their

work, and they

came to appreciate

the significance

of hers. “When

we create an

animation, it can

be the first time a

researcher who’s

been studying a

process for decades

has actually seen

it come to life,” Iwasa

said. Noting one instance in

particular: “He was nearly

in tears. ‘This is exactly how I

envisioned it,’ he said. ‘I was never able to

show people what this really looks like.’”

Eventually, Iwasa realized that she alone

would not be able to meet the demand for

projects, and so set about creating The

Animation Lab. With her lab, Iwasa also

had another objective in mind. “The idea

of having a community, even if I had to

build it myself, sounded pretty good,”

Iwasa said. She is giving her postdoctoral

fellows training opportunities that she

did not have herself, and many of them

are interested in forming groups of their

own at other institutions, sowing the

seed for a future tight-knit network of

biological animators.

Iwasa is highly optimistic about

the future of animation in biological

research, citing significant growth

in the field over the last decade. Her

goals for animation are clear and

compelling. “More researchers need to

be able to create visualizations easily—

the democratization of animation and

illustration,” Iwasa said. In particular, she

is excited by the prospect of collaborating

to populate a virtual cell, accurately and

comprehensively portraying the highly

complex and fundamental unit of life with

various models of its constituent parts.

With hardly any others to look up to

in crafting her academic journey, Janet

Iwasa has since carved out a discipline

in the rapidly growing field of biological

animation. She is an embodiment of

persevering through an untraditional

career path; as she says, “The career of

your dreams is not necessarily in the

most obvious place.” ■



FEATURE

Neuroaesthetics

ADDING THE "A"

TO "STEAM"

SCIENCES AND THE ARTS

WITH SUSAN MAGSAMEN

BY KELLY CHEN & HANNAH HUANG

ART BY ANMEI LITTLE

For someone who has spent her career studying neuroaesthetics—

how brain sciences interface with the arts—Susan Magsamen

has a surprising secret: she’s not a very good artist herself. “Like,

not good at all,” she laughs. “Not a good writer, not a good drawer,

not a good dancer, can’t sing at all. I will literally turn on Siri and sing

as loud as I can, and I just hear my husband close the door upstairs.”

Magsamen doesn’t do it for the praise—she simply does it for herself

and the pleasure she derives from it. And she’s devoted her life’s work

to helping others realize how art can impact human potential.

Magsamen’s interest in the field started early. At age nine, she saw

her twin sister immobilized and confined at home for a year and a

half after a serious accident resulted in a compound fracture in her

leg. An art class that her sister was able to take from home helped her

come to terms with her feelings, get over the trauma of the accident,

and ultimately saved her life, Magsamen believes.

Now, as the founder and Executive Director of the International

Arts + Mind Lab (IAM Lab), part of the Brain Science Institute at

Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Magsamen and her

team are focused on scientifically validating how art affects our

minds, bodies, and behavior, as well as how that knowledge can

be used in interventions at the personal, family, and community

level. Her team is conducting a number of research projects that

explore not only how the arts can improve health and well-being,

but also consider the importance of personal preference when using

art and aesthetic experiences as an intervention. For example, in

collaboration with Kennedy Krieger Institute, IAM Lab is building

a multisensory care room to aid

children waking up from coma,

customized with a child’s

favorite colors, scents,

sounds and textures.

Although there

is a growing body

of research on

neuroaesthetics,

efforts in this

emerging field

have largely

operated in

isolation. One of

Magsamen’s major goals is to “really coalesce all of the different

disciplines and practitioners and researchers around the world

who are already doing this work.” To do this, Magsamen’s team

has created a scientific method to study the arts called Impact

Thinking, a framework that can be consistently applied across

the field to standardize research practices and scale the most

promising, evidence-based interventions rapidly.

Magsamen is not only a passionate problem-solver and researcher,

but also an established entrepreneur and children’s book author.

Despite how different these fields may seem, Magsamen has “never

felt uncomfortable shifting between [these spaces].”

“The through lines to all of my work have really been three

things,” she said. “One is this idea around self-expression and

finding, sharing, and celebrating voice.” The other is “collaborations

and working with really amazing people.” The third is trying to

understand why something is happening, a curiosity that drives

her investigations into the underlying science of the arts.

Not all collaborations have been ideal, though. “Where I think

there have been barriers has been coming up against traditional

types of belief systems about what something should look like as

opposed to what something could be. In the venture [capital] world,

I came head up against gatekeepers—primarily older, white males

who were really just sexist,” she said. “I think that’s changing, but

it’s really true, and I think to not name it is wrong.” Her advice:

persevere through and hold your ground.

To all women in STEAM, Magsamen also emphasizes the

importance of taking care of your mind and your body, as well as

truly listening to yourself. “I do my best work when I sleep,” she

laughs. She chooses not to make important decisions or answer

questions late at night. “I needed to process and know what I thought

before I was responding to what people wanted me to respond to.”

In a society where art programs and experiences are often

underfunded or viewed as frivolous, Magsamen’s work may teach

us how important it is to incorporate art in our lives. “The arts

and aesthetic experiences make us healthier and more human

and connect us to ourselves,” she says. “We have become such a

transactional culture, and sometimes we’re not as transformational

and as fully alive as we can and should be.” Art doesn’t have to be

produced by a prodigy to have value—it can do its greatest good

when enjoyed by everyone, regardless of skill level. ■


FEATURE

ERIKA CHECK HAYDEN

Journalism

PAVING THE WAY FOR MORE

INCLUSIVE SCIENCE STORYTELLING

BY ALEX DONG &

ANGELICA LORENZO

For someone like Erika Check Hayden, a career in science

journalism was the perfect match. The daughter of two scientists,

her early passion for science bloomed as she immersed herself

in different labs, internships, and educational experiences. However,

her calling to science journalism was not clear until her undergraduate

career as a biology major at Stanford University.

As a writer for The Stanford Daily, Check Hayden fell in love with

gathering information and presenting it in a digestible, compelling,

and accurate narrative. Combining her newfound interest in reporting

with her curiosity for science, she set her focus on science journalism.

This path offered her the possibility to engage with multiple scientific

fields, such as genetics, infectious diseases, and biomedical

innovations—without having to focus on just one.

After graduating, Check Hayden served as a

reporter for Nature for fifteen years, during which

she wrote her award-winning coverage of the

2014 Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone. Initially,

Check Hayden covered the story from San

Francisco, before choosing to report from

the heart of the outbreak in Africa. There, she

quickly discovered that the reality of Ebola was

far different from its portrayal in American

media. She recognized how these American

stories were centered in Western involvement,

often failing to highlight the tremendous efforts

of African healthcare workers and scientists. On one

occasion, Check Hayden recalled meeting three courageous

women working tirelessly as nurses at an Ebola clinic, despite having

survived the disease themselves. The Western misconception that the

African response was incompetent catalyzed Check Hayden’s mission

to depict frontline workers in an honest, undistorted light.

As COVID-19 has disrupted our world, reliable scientific

communication has proven to be of paramount importance. “You

can see clearly that the spread of misinformation is hampering

the response to this disease, and it’s why the U.S. is leading the

developed world in terms of cases,” Check Hayden said. In response

to such issues, her Science Communication Master’s Program at

the University of California Santa Cruz

deliberately works on combating

the spread of misinformation by

training students to develop the

skills to tell engaging, authentic

stories. This is the lifeblood

of science journalism—to

be accurate and factual is

necessary, and to be engaging

is to attract and keep the

attention of readers.

ART BY ANMEI LITTLE

First introduced as a program lecturer, Check Hayden quickly

realized how unique the program was. “[The program] specializes

in taking people who have science backgrounds and giving them the

tools to make an impact through journalism and communication

careers,” she explained. The curriculum is designed for students

to partake in part-time internships alongside their coursework,

receive training in social media, and develop close relationships

with mentors and professional media outlets.

Seeking to amplify the voices of writers that have too long been

ignored and excluded, Check Hayden embraced her new role as the

program’s director in 2017. “It became more important for

me to try to use my position to help make coverage

in science journalism more inclusive, to empower

young journalists to tell the stories that they

think need to be told about science and

society,” she said. In addition to practical

training, the program also prepares its

students, the majority of whom identify as

women and non-binary people, to take on

leadership positions in a field still largely

dominated by men. According to The

Status of Women in the U.S. Media 2019

report produced by the Women’s Media

Center, women received just thirty-seven

percent of byline and other credits in television,

online, print, and wire news in 2017.

Reflecting on her own experience as a young reporter

in a field with a prevalent “boys’ club atmosphere,” Check Hayden

understood the importance of representation and mentorship. She

drew support from inspiring women editors at Nature like Helen

Pearson, Alexandra Witze, and Lauren Morello, who advocated for

her work and helped her navigate the field. She also cites her parents

as a major source of support. “Instead of trying to push me towards a

more conventional or practical career, they actively supported me in

continuing with my writing and finding a way to use it,” she said.

When thinking of the future of science journalism, she is

energized by skilled young journalists ethically addressing modern

issues like COVID-19 and telling stories inclusively, which helps

readers better connect with science. “If we can expand our thinking

about what makes for good stories, how to tell these stories, and

who deserves being covered, then we’re going to make a bigger

impact with our journalism.” ■

Women’s Media Center. (2019). The Status of Women in the U.S.

Media 2019 (Rep.) Retrieved September 29, 2020, from https://

tools.womensmediacenter.com/page/-/WMCStatusofWomenin

USMedia2019.pdf


FEATURE

Astrophysics

ACADEMIA WITHIN AN

A CONVERSATION WITH

KATIE MACK

BY BRIANNA FERNANDEZ


Looking up at a clear night sky and

pondering the significance of each

individual speck of light forces one

to question one’s place in the vast and everexpanding

universe. Though daunting and

terrifying at first, there is a strange relief

in knowing that even our oldest ancestors

have also asked, “How does it all work?

What does it all mean?”

Katie Mack, an assistant professor at

North Carolina State University, theorizes

about the same kinds of questions that

keep the rest of us up at night—only now,

she is closer to finding the answers. As

a theoretical cosmologist, Mack studies

everything from the beginning of the

universe to the end, researching what it

is made of and how it works. Among the

many questions in this field to be answered,

Mack’s research focuses on the connections

between cosmology and particle physics,

which leads to a plethora of questions

regarding the early universe, when particle

physics was different. Lately, her work has

focused on the ever-elusive topic of dark

matter, which is composed of particles that

don’t interact with light and may account for

unexplained stellar motions, and vacuum

decay, the theoretical and violent potential

fate of the universe. Particle physics can also

help uncover the fate of the cosmos, which

Mack explores in her new book, The End of

Everything (Astrophysically Speaking).

Astrophysics Goes Viral

Katie Mack is a busy person. But

when she’s not teaching classes,

conducting research, or writing

her book, she spends time on

her vastly popular Twitter

account, @AstroKatie, where

she engages her passion for

science communication.

With over 375,000 followers,

Mack has a considerable

audience to which she

imparts her knowledge

of astrophysics and her

opinions on topics that

matter to her. “At first I

was just talking to other

physicists,” Mack explained,

“but then I found out that it

could also be a really good

way to talk to nonphysicists.

And

there's kind

of a challenge and a skill to translating a

complicated topic to a general audience.”

To her, tweets are “a kind of literary form.”

Mack has always enjoyed writing, and

she first got into science communication

through science journalism in college.

Now, rather than writing for magazines

like she did in graduate school, she

uses her skills to write witty books and

viral tweets. This allows more people

to access her science, and it has the

added benefit of a platform, giving her a

celebrity experience within the astronomy

community. Her platform has granted

her access to a community of talented

people with which she wouldn’t have

been connected otherwise. “I have a lot

of friends who are super, super clever

people who have written amazing books

or produced amazing art or written

amazing music,” she said.

However, being in the spotlight has its

drawbacks. While her popularity redeems

free advertisements for her book and

invitations to conferences, it also means

that privacy is harder to come by. “It's

complicated to register to vote if you don't

want your address in the public record on

the Internet,” she explained, revealing an

unexpected facet to her fame.

Life in Academia

Before Mack was a popular science

communicator and theoretical cosmologist,

she was an undergraduate physics major

pursuing her passion at California Institute

of Technology. From there, her infatuation

took her around the world with stops

at Princeton, Cambridge (in the UK),


Astrophysics

FEATURE

ENDING UNIVERSE

Melbourne, and finally Raleigh, North

Carolina. Over the course of her academic

journey, she has “been more than 360

degrees” around the globe. Mack cites this

lifestyle as one of the biggest challenges

in academia, stressing that each time she

moved, she was starting over.

An early career characterized by

uncertainty and competition necessitates

flexibility and savings, which feeds into

the exclusionary culture of academia.

“I think the idea that you should move

every few years to do the postdoc thing is

built around the idea that your wife will

come with you and care for your children

while you’re at work,” Mack explained,

underscoring how academia is historically

male-dominated and not structured for

family-oriented people of any gender. The

constant moves pose great difficulties for

those trying to start families and foster

relationships. To this Mack added, “That

can be hard, and that can be hard on women

more often than men as well, on average,

because it's more likely that women are

dating other academics and trying to

maintain relationships.” As times continue

to change, more academics have called

for a restructuring of the field. Though

it is unclear what reforms will be made,

the archaic and unrealistic assumptions

woven through academia cannot stand for

much longer, especially as the community

continues to diversify, Mack said.

Mack is sure to stress that academia is

not all that bad. “It’s a really great job in

a lot of ways; I get to follow my curiosity,

I get to work on really interesting things,

I get to think for a living, and talk to a

lot of brilliant people, and that's all really

great. I really like that, and I get to travel

for free all over the world,” she said.

Amid the restrictive culture of academia

and the complications that come with a

viral online presence, speculating about

things as large as the origin and end of the

universe gives Mack a sense of catharsis. In

her new book, Mack invites us to consider

the potential fates of the universe, ranging

from depressing and agonizing heat

death to the violent catastrophe of the

Big Crunch. Many of us know at least

something about the beginning of the

universe; CBS’s The Big Bang Theory is

even named after it. However, there isn’t

much popular literature about its end.

“It was definitely a topic that I thought

needed to be written about. There's just

not a lot of public understanding of the

end of the universe or the future of the

universe, in general,” Mack said.

While educational, her book also

demonstrates a sharp wit, creating many

laugh-out-loud moments even about

our ultimate demise. Some endings

are grim, such as the reversal of the

expansion of the universe detailed in the

Big Crunch. Vacuum decay

could incinerate us at

any moment. But you

don’t think about being

personally ripped in half

by the universe while

reading about it. Instead,

you enjoy reading about

ultimate destruction like one

enjoys watching demolition derbies.

“It's nice to think about the end of the

universe because it's so separate from

the stress of daily life,” she said, “and

it's a totally different

scale of things so

it can be a nice

escape.” ■



FEATURE

Business

THINKING SPACE

BY BRITT

BISTIS

NEW INNOVATIONS IN BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH

Biotech and biomedical business skyrockets, literally,

as Andrea Yip, CEO and founder of Luna Design and

Innovation, launches commercial research experiments into

space. Luna is advancing human health and well-being by making

space a commercially viable research platform for biotech and

pharma companies. Luna is the global biotech partner for Blue

Origin’s New Shepard rocket.

Yip’s academic background is in the field of public health. After

receiving her BSc in Biology from the University of Calgary and

her MPH in Health Promotion from the University of Toronto,

she became immersed in helping those around her. Creating new

products and services in mental health and women’s sexual health, she

developed a strong passion for connecting individuals with medical

resources. This commitment is still at the heart of Luna, which seeks

to explore a new platform for medical research. “I still consider myself

as working in healthcare,” she explained, “just in space.”

Behind Luna’s meteoric success is Yip’s dedication to her

concept…and a lot of hard work. Yip had an impressive resumé

in public health and a successful job at Johnson & Johnson in

New York City doing product design, and then, she quit. As she

researched and sought new business opportunities, her mind

wandered into space. “I’ve always been fascinated by space, [and]

I credit my great-grandmother for sparking my interest. She didn’t

speak English but loved to watch visually stimulating TV shows,

her favorites being the World Wrestling Federation and Star Trek.”

The latter completely fascinated Yip: “I loved how they explored

space and pushed scientific boundaries.”

She then began to think about what it would be like to experience

space from the perspective of the everyday citizen, someone like

most of us who have never studied astrophysics or worked for NASA.

She organized her thoughts on a visually concise diagram called

a Journey Map, detailing what a trip to space would be like for a

commercial astronaut or “a space tourist.” Then she sent her creation

to companies, and Virgin Galactic responded with a contract offer.

Yip became CEO of Luna and launched herself into the

business of space exploration. However, creating a start-up

isn’t nearly as hard

as trying to grow its

business, in an arena

where only two percent

of start-up funding goes

to woman entrepreneurs.

“I’m often the only woman

and person of color in the room.

Sometimes, I really stand out when I go

to conferences,” Yip laughed. “Running a startup that focuses on

an emerging market in the space industry is exciting and forces

me to enter uncharted territory. What has been invaluable to

me as an entrepreneur is having diverse mentors and sponsors

who I can turn to for support.” She added, “I’ve learned how

important it is to reach out to other business leaders and

CEOs, particularly other women, who can relate to my own

experiences and help open doors to new opportunities.”

Yip finally saw her vision and hard work become reality by

orchestrating the first Blue Origin space flight competition in

Canada, which allowed over six hundred high school students to

design experiments online to be conducted in space’s microgravity

environment. One selected experiment will be launched into space

on Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket with the help of Luna.

“The commercial space industry is transforming the way we

think about space. It’s changing the way people like you or I can

access space today,” Yip says. “Scientists are exploring how to

leverage space as a research platform, and how the microgravity

environment can advance medical research in areas like oncology

or bone and muscle loss.” What excites Yip the most about space

is that it is a potentially untapped resource that is becoming more

tangible for more people. “I don’t have a traditional aerospace

background. I’ve embraced the fact that I have a biology, design,

and public health background and that I can be here, today, and be

one of the few women and people of color who is a space CEO. I’m

excited about what that means for access to space tomorrow and

how we can advance healthcare in space and on Earth.” ■



Business

FEATURE

“OKZOOMER” PLATFORM CONNECTS

ISOLATED COLLEGE STUDENTS

ILEANA VALDEZ’S CREATION PROMOTES SOCIAL

INTERACTION ACROSS BARRIERS BY CLAY THAMES

Ileana Valdez is inventive, inspired, and intelligent, and over

the quarantine period, she used these traits along with her

education to make a positive difference in the world. After

receiving news that the Spring 2020 semester had been cancelled,

Ileana did what most students did; she hopped online. There, she

was greeted by other students around the country who were all

mutually dissatisfied with how their spring semester ended. Many

students were expressing these feelings of discontent and sadness

on a Facebook meme page entitled, “Zoom Memes for Self-

Quaranteens,” and upon seeing this, Ileana began formulating an

idea. As a rising senior with many friends in the graduating Class

of 2020, Ileana felt that these seniors and other students had been

robbed of many friendships and potential romances.

A computer science major, she turned to her friend Patrycja

Gorska and created a form that students could fill out if they were

interested in finding a new friend while enduring quarantine. Ileana

said, “We got four thousand signups overnight,” which showed

the massive number of students expressing interest in making

new social interactions over the virtual meeting platform Zoom.

Neither anticipated this sort of overwhelming response, but upon

seeing that many students needed and wanted help creating new

friendships, Ileana set out to give these same students a medium

on which to satiate their desire for social interaction. Ileana and

Patrycja found the most important thing for a product to succeed

without even realizing it: a need for consumers.

For most people, the fun would have ended with the virality

of their Google form, which was intended to be a joke. Instead,

Ileana saw her opportunity and seized it. The problem: how to

create an interface that matches students based on their interests

and personality rather than their physical appearance so as to

facilitate friendships and potentially even flames of disembodied

romance. The solution: using knowledge

gained in the classroom to create

a platform that could provide

students with a glimmer of hope

in the

large shadow of despair cast by COVID-19. From class, Ileana

was familiar with coding and in one night, with the help of

her brother Jorge Valdez and Patrycja, created a website called

“OkZoomer.” Ileana said, “We created a clunky HTML website in

one night, and even though it had its bugs, it still worked.” This

website now has more than twenty thousand users, a testament to

her hard work and incredible matching algorithm.

“We are planning on launching an iOS version of the website in a

few weeks,” Valdez said. As amazing as her work with her startup has

been, she still cannot escape some patronization from her classmates.

Ileana feels that, in a particularly male-dominated field, her male

peers often tend to overexplain and treat her as if she is incapable of

accomplishing the task at hand. This could not be further from the

truth. Creation of a matching algorithm is “kind of complex,” in the

words of humble Valdez, and for an undergraduate to accomplish

such an astounding feat within the span of one night is truly a

remarkable feat. Valdez, however, is not worried about profit from

ad revenue or selling her site to other companies that might make

capital off her invention. She is instead a bubbly, compassionate, and

wildly intelligent woman whose passion for serving and making

others smile led her to create a site specifically for college students to

feel the same love she exudes, even from behind a computer screen.

Her goal was never to make profit, but to use her skills to bring

about positive change in a particularly trying time for everyone.

She told me a poignant anecdote about a student who told her he

had experienced difficulty making friends and especially romantic

connections due to his appearance. She said, “This one boy messaged

me and told me how grateful he was for the ‘OkZoomer’ platform

because he could never get dates in person. His story made my heart

melt.” “OkZoomer” provided a space for this student to be himself

and be confident in creating connections that will last far longer than

a quarantine period. Ileana has made an indelible positive impact on

the world, but this will not stop her from aspiring to achieve and

accomplish so much more as a leader and innovator in her field. ■




SPECIAL

Intersectionality

INTRODUCING SHEA AT YALE

Intersecting layers of marginalization mean that BIPOC women—and Black women

in particular—face unique experiences of discrimination in STEM. To highlight these

experiences, we have partnered with STEM and Health Equity Advocates at Yale (SHEA)

for the following pieces. Organized by alumni of Professor Carolyn Roberts’s Sickness and

Health in African-American History class and a group of students that authored an open letter

to pre-medical students, SHEA is an undergraduate organization at Yale that advocates for

racial justice in STEM. SHEA’s goals include demanding anti-racist curricula, uplifting underrepresented

STEM students, and supporting events and publications that seek to dismantle

systemic racism in STEM at Yale. For more information, visit http://bit.ly/SHEA_yale.

WHAT IS

MEANT FOR US?

BY

LELEDA

BERAKI

To be a woman in STEM” is a phrase we hear so often that it almost becomes white noise. We glance at the surface of

this concept and claim to understand the layers inside. To be a woman in STEM, to be overlooked while constantly

being watched, to be held to lower standards while expected to work harder, to be a spectacle while cast into the

shadows, to feel alone while numbers and pamphlets claim you are many. And to be a woman of color in STEM?

The quick glance around the classroom as you

ask yourself, “Am I the only one here?” The

incessant feeling that all eyes are drilling into

the back of your head, waiting for you to mess

up. The care with which you speak, dress, and

act, hoping to avoid the preconceived notions

you already think they hold. It’s drowning.

Drowning in expectations you set, drowning

in expectations others set, and drowning in the

complexities of your own psychology.

As women of color aspire to reach their

goals, they are met with textbooks that

praise the work of men while leaving out the

history of women, are taught by professors

speaking from pedestals of privilege, and

are constantly reminded that this field was

never meant for them. When trying to

visualize their future, they scramble to find

people who look like them, as others simply

flip a page and see their mirror image among

the words. Representation is many times

overlooked but can be the sole reason for

retention. It’s almost a never-ending cycle,

striving to create that representation while

needing to see it yourself. How does one

cope with that? How do we as women of color

balance our desire to be validated with our

aspirations to create validation for others?

Many fields, but especially our own,

regurgitate their value of diversity. Although

this was meant to create spaces of inclusivity,

it perpetuates the imposter’s syndrome already

boiling within us. We ask ourselves, did we get

here with our own merit or because there are

not many of us? We internalize the constant,

“Oh you got in because…” and the, “Why don’t

you do…,” then suddenly their words become

the voices in our heads. Although the thought

lingers, the answer is simple. We embarked on

a path never meant for our steps; we watched

our peers stride past us with ease. Nevertheless,

even as thorns scratched our legs, as vines

wrapped our feet, we still caught up. There is

no doubt that this spot was earned. No. This

spot was deserved.

It seems to me, more than the institutional

barriers, being in STEM is battling the push

and pull within our minds. While the most

important thing in class is passing the organic

chemistry exam, as soon as we step outside the

door, it shifts. Our minds are saturated with the

women of color everywhere whose lives are

taken with no remorse, whose worth has been

determined by someone else. We turn a corner,

open a newspaper, check our phone, and there

it is: the young girls of color who go missing,

who are stolen, who are forgotten…

A door is simply too weak to separate the

lives we live in society from the focus we

have in school.

Telling ourselves that we have come so far

doesn’t make this experience any easier. Being

a woman of color in STEM is a privilege and

a curse. Had we taken a different step as we

walked this path, perhaps we would be the ones

missing, stolen, or forgotten. Yet, even as we

embark on this journey, the threat remains. We

are not immune to the many ways society tears

us down simply because we wear a lab coat.

The path that I claimed was never meant for us,

has been walked on hundreds of times before by

women who look just like us. The eyes drilling

into your head? Those are your own. Women of

color face an immense amount of obstacles, but

we hold the true power to overcome them. ■

All quotes in this piece were provided by women

of color pursuing STEM at Yale College.


Public Health

SPECIAL

IMAGE COURTESY OF MCDOW

Kendra McDow, a physician and

CDC medical epidemiologist,

is leading the charge for racial

justice in public health.

THE

OCKING

BOAT

How Dr. Kendra McDow Imbues

Public Health with Racial Justice

BY ATHENA STENOR

IMAGE COURTESY OF WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

As an undergraduate, McDow worked with

Common Ground, an anti-racist organization, to

help New Orleans rebuild after Hurricane Katrina.

As I pored over LinkedIn, Twitter,

and various healthcare websites

in preparation for my interview

with Dr. Kendra McDow, a clear portrait

of the formidable female data scientist and

epidemiologist took shape in my mind.

Her resume is impressive. She holds an

undergraduate degree in biology and

religion from Swarthmore, a Masters in

Public Health (MPH) from Columbia, and

an MD from Mount Sinai. She currently

serves as a medical epidemiologist at the

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

(CDC), where she has spent the past

few months promoting telehealth in the

COVID-19 pandemic. As I understand

firsthand the sacrifices Black women

must make in order to succeed in male-

dominated STEM fields, my invented Dr.

Kendra McDow was an amalgamation of

all the top-notch Black career women I had

encountered in the media—irreproachable

and a bit austere à la Annalise Keating of

How to Get Away with Murder or Olivia

Pope of Scandal. . Yet, on the late summer

morning of our interview, McDow’s sunny

voice sliced through the hazy monotony of

quarantine. She barely introduced herself.

The moment our phone lines connected,

McDow dissolved the stuffy formality of


interview etiquette and conversed with

me in the approachable, conspiratorial

manner of an aunt or beloved neighbor.

Despite the years she spent training with

the National Center for Health Statistics

as an Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS)

fellow, McDow doesn’t think of herself as a

data scientist. Most of her formal education

prepared her to be a pediatrician, and she often

finds herself missing the routine of seeing

patients and bonding with children and their

families. McDow’s pursuit of data science has

little to do with any particular love for numbers

and everything to do with the socio-political

influence of data in the technological age. Her

truest passion is, and has always been, affecting

material social change. Data science provides a

way for her to do so. “To sway public opinion, to

sway the opinion of [policy makers], you have

to be able to collect data, you have to be able

to analyze data… and you have to be able to

translate it into a message that is cohesive, into

a message that multiple audiences understand

and can take action based off of,” McDow said.

Setting Sail

Although she didn’t always see herself at

the CDC, McDow had long known that she

would never be quite satisfied by the typical

duties of a physician, constrained by a laser-

focus on individual patients. She went into her

medical training conscious of the fact that she

eventually wanted to improve health at the

population level and to rectify the systemic

injustices perpetrated against the African-

American community. As an undergraduate

student, McDow had spent time in New

Orleans rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina

as a member of Common Ground, an

anti-racism organization. She witnessed

how Common Ground’s efforts to address

structural inequality were still able to help

survivors in a personal way.

In time, her curiosity about the

intersection of healthcare and social

justice inspired her to get a MPH degree

between her third and fourth year of

medical school, if only to have a broader

knowledge base to draw on during patient

interactions. When confronted with racial

health disparities, having a public health

background allowed her to understand

that historical trauma manifests itself

in the very beings of marginalized

people, both today and tomorrow. “We

are learning that chronic stress, the

weathering that occurs, causes epigenetic

changes and may result in generational

inheritance of disease," McDow said.


SPECIAL

Public Health

“So, this is not just having an impact at

one person’s level, but it’s also affecting

generations. It’s affecting generations.”

The sentiment could just as easily be

applied to McDow’s own family history. She

was born and raised in Washington, D.C.,

but both sides of her family are originally

from South Carolina. Her mother and

paternal grandparents were all part of the

Great Migration, joining thousands of other

Black Americans in escaping segregation and

terrorism in the South. They left in search

of a setting where they could realize their

potential, where their worth would be judged

on merit rather than on a part of their identity

over which they had no control. D.C. was far

from a utopia, but it provided at least some

relief from oppressive Jim Crow laws in the

South. Her family’s willingness to uproot

for better opportunities would never be

forgotten. “It’s something that’s always stayed

with us, and that we have drawn strength

from,” McDow remarked.

So, McDow’s parents pushed her to excel in

her education, knowing that her credentials

would grant her access to the influence

necessary to help her community. She grew up

keenly aware of her history and her obligation

to improve the lives of others, and this personal

stake in social justice drove her later career

choices. The same historic subjugation that has

left its ghostly fingerprints in Black Americans’

DNA generated one of its most devoted

assailants. One could say McDow’s hunger for

righteousness was baked into her very being.

Doing so, however, would disregard the

work that McDow has done to unlearn

her own unconscious biases. When she

attended medical school in the early

2000s, she and the other medical students

were trained to diagnose patients based

on pattern recognition—a sanitized term

for stereotypes. In an exam, when given

a patient vignette that began with “young

African-American...” the medical students

could safely assume that the fictional patient

had sickle cell disease and know that they’d

be marked correct. Several years later, when

Central American patients tested positive

for the sickle cell trait at the community

health center where she worked, McDow

was puzzled. She told herself that they must

have had some Black ancestry. Eventually,

one of her mentors, a Guyanese doctor

who graduated from Howard University’s

College of Medicine in the 1950s, explained

to her that sickle cell disease was a genetic

mutation, not something caused by one’s

race or ethnicity. That conversation forced

McDow to separate the socially constructed

theory of race from the biological reality

of genetics, a fine distinction that she still

struggles to grasp fully. “It’s still difficult for

me to conceptualize that. It’s an unlearning;

it’s an unlearning that has to take place,” she

admitted. Despite her prior activism and

personal experiences, she was not immune

to the harmful mythos of race.

Shifting Course

McDow’s shortcomings only strengthened

her resolve to dismantle racial disparities

in healthcare. As a medical resident, she

questioned the leading theory that African-

“[Race] isn’t a

priority because

no one’s thinking

about it. And the

people who would

think about it are

not at the table.”

Americans’ poor health outcomes were caused

by soul food diets. Later, as a pediatrician, she

personally called school nurses, psychologists,

and guidance counselors to make sure that

ill children had the proper accommodations

because she knew that strong academic

performance leads to better economic status,

which then leads to better health as an adult.

Eventually, McDow became frustrated by

the limits of her reach as a lone physician. “I

felt like my hands were tied… I wanted to be

able to say that this child needs to connect to

[this specialist], but, for some reason, I can’t

even get them an appointment,” McDow said.

“Why is that? Why are the resources so lacking

that my patients cannot be connected to the

services they need, not because of any fault of

their own, but because the economic resources

are not there in the community because of

structural inequality, because of racism?”

The more time McDow spent as a

pediatrician, the more obvious it became

that medicine was too siloed for her

ambitions. As a public health professional,

she could work directly with the board of

education. She could focus exclusively on a

given community’s historical relationship

with government and healthcare systems

and develop far-reaching interventions to

address the modern repercussions of those

relationships. So, after a decade, McDow

applied to the EIS, leaving medicine behind

to enter public health. “I wanted to know how

I could join the community of people who are

thinking like that,” McDow said.

Rough Seas

In public health, McDow found a

community that, like her, was still grappling

with the mythos of race. For all its analysis

about the intersections of history and

collective wellness, public health still has many

blind spots with regards to race. Although

public health professionals have supported

emerging research detailing the origin and

mechanism of healthcare disparity, there is

a difference between extensively describing a

problem and fixing it. That, McDow believes,

is the current frontier of race and public

health: we understand how racism, not race,

acts as a social determinant of health, but

we are paralyzed by inexperience. “The issue

now is with the science that we have, with

the evidence that we have, how do we craft

interventions based on this?” McDow said.

“How do we evaluate those interventions?”

The challenge is partly caused by the lack

of diversity at the upper echelons of health

institutions. Black scientists, physicians,

and public health professionals are

underrepresented in leadership positions. As

a result, McDow opined, efforts to alleviate

the burden of disease on marginalized

communities have been reactionary instead

of proactive. “[Race] isn’t a priority because

no one’s thinking about it. And the people

who would think about it are not at the

table,” McDow elaborated. If our society

ever wants to be free of the multi-headed

beast of white supremacy, we must begin by

investigating who has access to the platforms

that could ameliorate racial inequality in the

first place. And then we must ask ourselves

the question that shifted the course of

Kendra McDow’s life: Why is that? ■


Biomedical Engineering

SPECIAL

IMAGE COURTESY OF PIXABAY

SCIENTIST

IMAGE COURTESY OF KORIE GRAYSON

Dr. Korie Grayson in her lab with a

microscope examining a cell culture.

How Korie Grayson balances

her STEM research with her

interests outside of STEM

BY GONNA NWAKUDU

When COVID-19 caused

businesses across the United

States to shut down, many

young people found themselves trapped

at home with an abundance of free time.

Many found solace in TikTok trends like

the #WipeItDownChallenge, which involves

wiping a mirror and switching between

two disparate appearances. For Dr. Korie

Grayson, a postdoctoral research fellow in

chemical engineering at the University of

Michigan, the trend was a way for her to

celebrate the completion of her PhD. “I was

a little bummed out and upset that I wasn’t

able to walk in person because of COVID,”

Grayson said. “I was like… this #WipeItDown

challenge looks kind of cool. I think it would

be a cool idea if I just showed myself getting

into my gown and [doing] certain swipes and

wipes.” In her version of the TikTok trend,

Grayson alternates between an AstroWorld


shirt and her red and black graduation regalia.

The video went viral, gaining likes and shares

from celebrities and aspiring scientists alike.

While it is not the only thing Grayson will

be known for, it encapsulates the engineer’s

dedication to fun and activism in her career.

Grayson’s PhD research involved targeted

drug delivery approaches to treat late-stage

prostate cancer. Inspired by her grandfather’s

passing from prostate cancer and her own

predisposition to colorectal cancer, Grayson

spent her PhD program analyzing whether

nanoparticle drugs decorated with TRAIL,

a protein that can induce cell death, could

target and penetrate primary prostate

tumors using leukocytes, immune cells

that are already in the body. “[TRAIL is]

specific to cancer cells but spares normal

cells,” she said. “We would use it to decorate

the particle. And so… [using E-selectin, a

cell surface molecule] it would latch onto

leukocytes in the blood and then target and

bombard cancer cells [to kill them].” She

subsequently examined the interactions

between her TRAIL-based nanoparticle

drug and other more common therapies for

metastatic cancer in 2D and 3D cultures.

She found that common clinical treatments

sensitized the tumors enough for TRAIL to

effectively kill prostate cancer cells.

During her postdoctoral position, she

hopes to extend her research to colorectal

cancer and COVID-19. Acute respiratory

distress syndrome (ARDS) is a deadly

condition that can affect COVID-19

patients. ARDS is often caused by

leukocytes like neutrophils infiltrating the

lungs. “If we can preferentially target a

certain leukocyte so they don’t do this…

then maybe we can spare people … at that

stage,” Grayson said. Grayson’s research

will focus on evaluating novel nano- and


SPECIAL

Biomedical Engineering

microparticles for therapy in neutrophilic,

acute inflammatory diseases and cancer.

Outside of engineering, Grayson’s interests

include participating in Carnival, a monthslong

annual Trinidadian custom that reaches

its peak the Monday and Tuesday before

Ash Wednesday. While she herself is not

Trinidadian, participating in the costuming

and parties has allowed her to completely

immerse herself in the cultural significance of

the event as well as regain ownership of her

appearance. “From an outsider looking in, it

looks really raunchy and debauchery, but [it

is] just a freedom of expression and sexual

liberation while celebrating the traditions and

culture of Trinidad and Tobago,” Grayson

said. Grayson carries this mindset to all

aspects of her life as a tattooed Black woman

in STEM, pushing back against the notion that

scientists must look a certain way in order to

be seen as professional. “We’re multifaceted.

We don’t necessarily fit the stereotype of just

being buttoned up, geeky, nerdy,” Grayson

said. “We also can wear bathing suits; we also

can go have fun; we might drink a little; we

have tattoos; we have piercings.”

Grayson stresses the importance of

visibility when it comes to pursuing a career

in STEM. “One of the main reasons why

women don’t remain in STEM, especially

women of color, is because we don’t have that

representation, and we don’t see it,” she said.

This is evident in the statistics: according

to a 2015 survey by the National Science

Foundation, Black women make up less than

ten percent of the STEM workforce and less

than four percent of STEM-related doctorate

programs. Additionally, sexism continues

to be a barrier of entry for aspiring female

scientists, as proven by a recent controversial

manuscript in the Journal of Vascular

Surgery that declared wearing bikinis to `be

“unprofessional behavior” for scientists. By

pushing back against the article’s policing of

what female scientists should and should not

wear, Grayson combats this misogyny.

Ultimately, Grayson aspires to not only

succeed in her research but also to show Black

women that success in STEM is possible for

people who look like them. “My purpose here

is greater than me,” Grayson said. “It’s about

growing and inspiring and helping other

people get to where I’m at and beyond.” ■

To learn more about Dr. Korie Grayson, check

out her Twitter/Instagram page at @teamkorie

and her website at koriegrayson.com.


What still needs to

be done to improve

GENDER

EQUITY

INCLUSION

IN STEM?

A Message from our

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This September marks the fiftieth year

of coeducation in Yale College and the one

hundred and fiftieth year of female students

at Yale University. In 1869, Alice and Susan

Silliman were the first females to enroll and

joined the Yale School of Fine Arts. In 1885,

Alice Rufie Blake Jordan was the first female

to enroll at Yale Law School; she applied using

her initials and was assumed to be male. In

1894, Yale awarded its first PhD degrees to

women. In 1905, Florence Bingham Kinne

became a professor of pathology and the

first female instructor at Yale. It took another

sixty-four years before Yale admitted female

undergraduate students.

Despite these major steps forward,

progress towards equal representation at

Yale was slow. In 1977, five percent of female

faculty members were tenured, compared

to the fifty percent of male faculty. Males

made up the majority of the first-year class

until 1995. All residential colleges were

named after white men until 2017, when

Calhoun College was renamed to Grace

Hopper and Pauli Murray College was built.

Even today, women represent 57.6% of Yale

College undergraduates but only 38.6%

of STEM undergraduates. Women from

underrepresented backgrounds represent

16.6% of undergraduates but only 9.16% of

STEM undergraduates (p. 27). This issue

features the stories of women in STEM

who broke down these barriers and became

leaders in their fields.

Keeping true to our usual coverage, we

still feature cutting-edge advances made

by women researchers at Yale (see Features

section), as well as profiles of a few notable

women leaders in STEM (see Focus section)

whose individual journeys to success have

been nothing short of amazing. Equally

notable are women innovating in new STEM

fields and non-traditional roles. In stepping

outside of the norm, these women face the

dual challenges of being a woman in STEM

and forging their path without the guidance

of forerunners. Janet Iwasa took a significant

leap by branching out into biological

visualizations (pp. 38–39); women like Mariel

Pettee (p. 5) and Susan Magsamen (p. 40) are

pushing the boundaries of science into the

arts. And women like Shara Yurkiewicz (p.

36) and Erika Check Hayden (p. 41) are using

their expertise and voices to communicate

science—journalism is itself another maledominated

field, with its own set of challenges.

That they have all succeeded and left their

unique impact on the field is a testament to

Future

SPECIAL

their grit and courage in stepping where few

women have trodden before.

Although we started out with the intention

of featuring the achievements of standout

women in science, we were also inspired

by the collective ways they made science

accessible to other women in the field.

Akiko Iwasaki comments on restructuring

meetings to include more women and

offering support to those who must also take

care of their children at home (pp. 16–18).

Clare Flannery’s all-female medical research

team has fostered a culture of inclusion and

solidarity for their female patients (pp. 19–

21). As the only female faculty member in

the physics department, Meg Urry pushed

for more female representation—today,

there are five more with tenure (pp. 31–33).

Aside from being successful scientists, these

women are also fierce advocates for a more

inclusive academic culture, mentors to

younger women in STEM, and above all, role

models to current and future scientists.

The road ahead to true equality remains

long. Astrophysicist Katie Mack calls

attention to a culture of academia—that

requires constant geographic relocation

and thus creates instability—that is not

conducive to women with families (pp. 42–

43). The numbers reflect this “leaky pipeline”

phenomenon: while women receive half of

STEM undergraduate degrees, their numbers

decrease throughout each level of graduate

education such that they comprise only a

quarter of the STEM workforce (p. 27).

The numbers also tell another story:

underrepresented minority women, bearing

intersecting layers of marginalization, feel

these barriers more profoundly. Leleda Beraki

’24 highlights the unique weights Black women

pursuing STEM bear: isolation, imposter

syndrome, and the weight of stereotypes, all

while contending with the psychological toll of

seeing Black women face violence beyond the

classroom (p. 46). “Why is that?” asks Kendra

McDow, a Black physician and epidemiologist

at the CDC who has dedicated her life to

fighting racial injustice in medicine and public

health. To move forward, McDow urges, we

have to first critically evaluate the historical

and ongoing forces that shape current racial

disparities (pp. 47–48).

Women have come a long way in the fields

of STEM, but there is still more work to be

done and more progress to be made. As the

community of women in STEM continues to

grow, we hope we can inspire one another to

continue learning, working, and innovating. ■


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