Women in Planetary Science: Female Scientists on Careers, Research, Space Science, and Work/Life Balance (original) (raw)

Hello all! We had some delays this year in getting all the logistics in place for the upcoming DPS Women in Planetary Science Discussion Hour, but we finally have all the details sorted out. So we hope you can join us either in person or online for a networking/discussion event similar to some of the ones we have done in the past with prompts/table topics :). All details below!

WOMEN IN PLANETARY SCIENCE DISCUSSION Hour AT THE 56TH DPS MEETING – Boise, Idaho and Virtual

Interested in engaging in meaningful discussions about career challenges, opportunities, and experiences? All levels are welcome to join in at the Women in Planetary Science (WiPS) Networking & Discussion Event at DPS 2024 in Boise, ID and Virtually (Hybrid Event – see all details below, if you are attending only this event virtually you do not need to be registered for the entire DPS meeting)!

Date/time: Wednesday, October 8, 2024, from 12:15 pm MT – 1:15 pm MT

Thanks to generous sponsorship from AURA and the DPS Committee we are able to offer a Baked Idaho Potato Bar lunch for those who register in advance.

This is a great opportunity to network with peers, share your experiences, and discuss topics relevant to women in the field of planetary science. Whether you are just starting out or are an established professional, this event aims to foster a supportive community and facilitate conversations that can help us grow together. We will have a networking/discussion-focused event and this time we will have table topics/prompts similar to how we have done it sometimes in the past.

The event is open to all registered attendees of the DPS meeting. It will be hybrid, allowing participation in-person or virtually. Come prepared to connect, share, and inspire!

We look forward to seeing you there!

Please click this link (also copied below) for the free registration (and more information) to attend the Women in Planetary Science Discussion Hour (separate from DPS registration – and if you are attending only this event virtually you do not need to be registered for the DPS meeting).

Advance registration is required to get a free lunch – just so that we know approximately how many people are coming. You can always attend without registering but we cannot guarantee lunch in that case.

http://bit.ly/DPS_WiPS_2024

~Kelsi Singer, Jennifer Hanley, Ariel Denbow, Audrey Martin, Tess Marlin, Mikayla Huffman, and The Professional Development Committee of the DPS

Hi again all! I attended one of these workshops in Boulder last week and it was great to be able to discuss with the variety of participants and local community members who were there on these topics. We also did an outreach event at a boys and girls club in Denver and it was super fun :). The workshop coordinators provide example activities and supplies but you can also design/bring your own if you wish. Example creations from the “mountains on planets” activity my workshop partner and I conducted below (using model magic and markers :).

And passing on the info about the next one of these workshops below! ~Kelsi

Culturally Inclusive Planetary Engagement Workshop

September 24 – 26, 2024, Boys & Girls Club of Burbank (CA) and Greater East Valley

led by NASA’s Planetary ReaCH project

Planetary science and astrobiology subject matter experts are invited to apply to attend the Culturally Inclusive Planetary Engagement professional development workshop at the Boys & Girls Club of Burbank and Greater East Valley, September 24 – 26, 2024 in Burbank, CA. During the three-day workshop, participants engage with local informal (out-of-school time) educators to discuss and model effective strategies for engaging Black and Latinx communities in planetary science. In addition, participants conduct hands-on activities and co-create a public engagement in collaboration with a local youth-serving organization. The event takes place on the third day of the workshop and allows participants the opportunity to practice engagement strategies discussed in the workshop.

During the workshop, participants team-up to:

Explore the importance of building equitable partnerships with organizations, subject matter experts, and informal educators serving Black and Latinx audiences
Learn evidence-based culturally relevant authentic approaches to nurture connections with Black and Latinx individuals
Practice planetary science engagement approaches through a culturally inclusive lens

The deadline to apply is 5:00 P.M. Central, August 31, 2024. Space is limited to 10 subject matter experts. Stipends are available for participants able to accept them. More information, including a link to the application, is available online at https://www.lpi.usra.edu/planetary-reach/workshops/losangeles.

Please direct questions to Andy Shaner – shaner@lpi.usra.edu.

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Planetary Resources and Content Heroes (ReaCH) is led by the Lunar and Planetary Institute with multiple collaborating institutes and is composed of a diverse team of scientists, educators, evaluators, and diversity experts. ReaCH is supported by NASA under cooperative agreement award number 80NSSC21M0003 within NASA SMD’s Science Activation portfolio.

Hello all! Its been a while since we had a post but I have a few things to share in the next few weeks :).

I have had more intersections with women in heliophysics/astrophysics groups lately and the SHEILD Center directed by Merav Opher at Boston University has a great series of webinars. https://shielddrivecenter.com/shield-webinars/ Past webinars include topics such as mental health, LGBTQ+ in space sciences, and interviews with women in space science (including some of our planetary science friends!) and recordings are available.

The upcoming webinar (this Monday Aug 19th) features Merav’s conversation with Diana Nyad, a world renown marathon swimmer and a member of the International Women’s Sports Hall of Fame, overcame extraordinary challenges to swim the open ocean from Cuba to Key West Florida. Her passion, perseverance and resilience were key to ultimately succeeding after multiple attempts at this extraordinary feat. See all the details below!

Webinar Details

The Human Spirit Can Make The ‘Impossible’ Possible: What space exploration can learn about passion, persistence, and resilience from a groundbreaking athlete.

Monday, August 19th, 2pm ET (1 pm Central, Noon MT, 11 am Pacific)

Register to get the link to the webinar sent to your e-mail: https://bostonu.zoom.us/webinar/register/ WN_zmIYnKlRRk2Fg9w4QGUXDQ#/registration

By Jessica Noviello

When I defended my Ph.D. in June 2019, I didn’t have a job lined up. Part of this was because I was ignorant of the ebbs and flows of the academic job market, but mostly it was because I could not decide what I wanted to do next. My graduate school experience had been unusually bumpy, and the entire process and the inherent instability of research made me reluctant to remain in academia. But what else could I do? A professor in the department offered me a short-term postdoctoral research position to help him finish a project, and I took the job so I could have income while I figured out a plan.

This postdoc saved my career. Besides learning how to do geophysical modeling, I started branching out into formal science communication work, even founding a group to do this work within NExSS, the NASA Astrobiology research coordination network that focuses on exoplanets. This additional work meant that multiple projects could support me, and I could and did extend my postdoc from just a few months to over a year, through all of 2020. That year was a nightmare for most of us (and I acknowledge that numerous issues are still ongoing), and I feel fortunate that I was employed and could work from home when many of my friends and family could not. This job had a time limit on it though. I realized I liked research, but I loved solving problems that involved people and their research, so I started exploring science management opportunities.

This year’s theme is resilience! We will provide some food for thought but much of the meeting will be reserved for discussion.

Thanks to generous sponsorship from AURA (Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy), and the DPS Committee!

To learn more about AURA please visit https://www.aura-astronomy.org/

Date: Tues, Oct 3, 2023

Time: 12:15-1:15 pm Central US time (the lunch break is 12:00-1:30 but we are leaving 15 min on either side for transition, we will likely setup the lunches in the hallway outside the room so that people can start getting those before 12:15, but we will update this page as we know more)

Duration: ~1 hr

Place: DPS-EPSC Conference Venue in San Antonio, TX, USA – and Virtual

–> In-Person: Room Number TBD
–> Virtual link to be sent to registrants, and also available for DPS meeting registrants on the block schedule. Please don’t post the link in a public place to avoid zoom-bombing (but the link can be shared with colleagues).

We will do our best to make this a great event for both virtual and in person attendees. We plan to have hosts both online and in person, and provide materials to both as well. This only our 2nd time having a hybrid event so please be patient with us! 🙂

Please see more details and register for the event at http://bit.ly/DPS_WiPS_2023.

The event is free to attend. We know plans change, but please register ASAP if there is a 50% chance you will attend either in person or virtual so we can start to plan. For in person, please try to register by Sept 15 – but earlier is better because we have a limited number of lunches we can provide. But you are still welcome to attend and bring your own lunch if we run out of the provided lunches.

You do not need to be registered for the DPS meeting to attend virtually.

Hope to see you there!

~Kelsi Singer, Audrey Martin, Parvathy Prem, Ali Bramson, Jennifer Hanley, Maggie McAdam, Kat Volk, Ingrid Dauber, and The Professional Development Committee of the DPS

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine convened a committee on Policies and Practices for Supporting Family Caregivers Working in Science, Engineering, and Medicine. Two of the goals of this committee are:

Summarize the published research on the challenges faced by scientists, engineers, and medical professionals who are family caregivers (i.e., parents and those with eldercare responsibilities, or both), including research on the impact of COVID-19 these individuals;
Document institutional and governmental efforts to support caregivers and the positive and negative impacts of such efforts (if known), including any unintended consequences of well-intentioned policies and practices;

We seek your input (basically white papers, but we’re calling them dear colleague letters) on our study examining policies and programs to support the retention, re-entry, and advancement of students and professionals working in academic science, engineering, and medicine with caregiving responsibilities (e.g., these responsibilities include caregiving for kids, spouses, significant others, dependent adults, parents, etc.).

To share information, please submit a description and any related publications
by June 1, 2023, using this link.

Although the primary focus of the study is women caregivers in science, engineering, and medicine, people of all genders, including men, face obstacles as caregivers. Therefore, the study scope will include caregivers of all genders but emphasize women. The study will also take an intersectional approach and place particular emphasis on the experiences of the most marginalized groups in science, engineering, and medicine, such as women of color, who remain particularly underrepresented in these fields.

For questions, please contact Jeff Gillis-Davis at j.gillis-davis_at_wustl.edu

In March, Martha Gilmore delivered an unusually moving keynote lecture at the annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Woodlands, Texas. Woven into a talk about the geology of Venus was a challenge for the mostly white, mostly male audience to think deeply about who is — or rather, who is not — doing research in this field.

According to data from the American Geosciences Institute, people from under-represented minority groups — including Black people — made up less than 6.7% of those awarded geoscience doctorates in 2019. And the proportion of those who continue in geoscience in some capacity shrank from 23% in 2010 to 19% in 2017.

“If I’m under-represented, then white folks are over-represented by definition,” said Gilmore, who is Black and a professor of earth and environmental sciences at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. “So what I’m going to ask you to do is think about, scientifically, why that’s an issue.”

Read more about Dr. Gilmore’s experiences here.

More on Dr. Gilmore’s research and achievements can be found at:
Masursky Lecture (2022)
Claudia J. Alexander Prize (2022)
Persistence Pays Off (2022)
51+ Women in Planetary Science (2021)
Bromery Award (2020)

This interview was conducted by Kelsi Singer and Jamie O’Brien. Jamie is currently a graduate student in a joint Aerospace and Engineering Management at University of Colorado.

Dr. Shannon Curry

Shannon Curry is a planetary physicist and Assistant Deputy Director at the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. She is involved in many spacecraft missions and concepts, and last year was named as the Principal Investigator of the NASA Mars Scout MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) mission. Her research focus is on terrestrial planetary atmospheres, primarily in atmospheric escape and dynamics at weakly magnetized planets. She is also involved in instrument development and mission concept development for future flight exploration of the solar system. Other collaborations include serving as the Project Scientist on ESCAPADE (a Phase C NASA SIMPLEx-II mission) and as a science team member for Parker Solar Probe (PSP) missions, as well as a collaborator on NASA’s Nexus for Exoplanet System Science (NExSS) program.

1. How did you first become interested in astronomy or planetary science?

I have always been one of those kids who found looking up at the stars fascinating. I went to undergrad at Tufts University in Boston, and majored in astrophysics with an art history and studio art minor. During that time, I did a semester “abroad” in Arizona, doing observing at the Columbia observatory at the biosphere and taking coursework. After undergrad I wanted to take some time to figure out what do with my life, and I took six months off and did bartending. Next, I started engineering work at Lockheed because I was looking for some more tangible projects. The engineering component of being able to solve problems appealed to me and I thought it would be a great way to use math and physics in an applied problem. And an opportunity to work there came along in the defense sector. But eventually I decided that was not the best fit for me and I wanted to move back to science.

A skill that is very handy from the engineering world is to have schedules and deliverables. This gives you an idea of how to have a straightforward answer with a clear direction.

Ellen R. Stofan, PhD

Dr. Ellen Stofan is the Under Secretary for Science and Research at the Smithsonian. She oversees its science research centers as well as the National Museum of Natural History and the National Zoo. The Smithsonian Libraries and Archives, Office of International Relations, Smithsonian Scholarly Press and Scientific Diving Program also report to Stofan. Her focus is the Smithsonian’s collective scientific initiatives and commitment to research across the Institution, especially addressing issues such as biodiversity, global health, climate change, species conservation, astrophysics and the search for life outside Earth’s solar system.

Previously, Stofan was the John and Adrienne Mars Director of the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum (2018–2021) where she was the first woman to hold that position. Under her leadership, the museum began its seven-year renovation of its flagship building in Washington, D.C., in 2018. Stofan also oversaw the momentous celebration of the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing in July 2019 at the museum and on the National Mall. She joined the Museum in 2018 with more than 25 years of experience in space administration and planetary science. Dr. Stofan was previously Chief Scientist at NASA.

She also held senior scientist positions at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, including work on missions exploring Venus, Earth, Mars, and Saturn; as chief scientist – New Millennium Program; and principal investigator on the proposed Titan Mare Explorer. Dr. Stofan holds master’s and doctorate degrees in geological sciences from Brown University, and a bachelor’s degree from the College of William & Mary. She is an honorary professor at University College London, and was on the board of the College of William & Mary.

Ellen R. Stofan, PhD, stands in front of Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed 5B Vega at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC, June 26, 2018. (NASM photo by Jim Preston) [NASM2018-01471]

Both Ellen and Mikayla attended William & Mary for their undergraduate work, so that was a fun connection for this interview! 😊

1. How did you first become interested in astronomy and planetary science in general?

My story is not at all a typical story. I always really liked science, but there were so few women role models to look toward that I didn’t really know what kind of scientist I wanted to be. My biggest heroine at that point was Mary Leakey, so I thought I wanted to be an archeologist. This was the 1960s, and there were all these articles about the work she was doing on human origins. My mother was an elementary school science teacher, and while she was getting her master’s degree in Ohio, she took a geology course. I was probably ten or eleven, and she asked the professor if I could come because I was always picking up rocks. I thought the idea that you could use rocks to read the past was just really cool!

Read more…

Join us for the annual Division for Planetary Sciences Women in Planetary Science event in a hybrid format on October 4, Noon-1 Eastern. All are welcome! We will have both online and in person event hosts to facilitate conversation for both types of attendees. This year the format will be mostly small-group discussions on professional development topics.

A huge thanks(!) to our generous sponsor AURA (https://www.aura-astronomy.org/) for supporting this event again this year.

Please see more details and register for the event at http://bit.ly/DPS_WiPS_2022. The event is free to attend. We know plans change, but please register ASAP if there is a 50% chance you will attend either in person or virtual so we can start to plan. For in person, please try to register by August 15 – that is when we need to get the initial food order in. You do not need to be registered for the DPS meeting to attend virtually.

Hope to see you there!

A huge thanks(!) to our generous sponsor AURA (https://www.aura-astronomy.org/) for supporting this event again this year.

Hope to see you there!

From LPI, In the News (July 12, 2022)

The late Dr. Carolyn S. Shoemaker had a brief, but extraordinary scientific career. In a twelve-year window, she discovered a world record 32 comets, including Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 that dramatically plunged into the atmosphere of Jupiter in 1994. She was preceded in death by her husband, Eugene Shoemaker, who led the Apollo 11 and 12 geology teams and helped craft the field of impact cratering science. When Gene died, Carolyn provided funds to the Geological Society of America (GSA) Foundation for an endowment to support student research, with an award named in honor of her husband. That award will now be known as the Eugene and Carolyn Shoemaker Impact Cratering Award.

Undergraduate and graduate students working in the disciplines of geology, geophysics, geochemistry, astronomy, or biology, can apply for research support here. The deadline to apply is August 26, 2022.

Read more about the award here and here. Read more about Carolyn’s life and legacy here.