By Poornima Peiris

Sara Laschever, the keynote speaker at this year’s Scientista Symposium, gave Scientistas the facts behind the art of negotiating and why men always have an upper hand when it comes to self-advocacy.

By Anna Groves
 
It's me. Actually, it's the research. 

​I have known I would leave academia since Monday, February 25, 2013. It was my first year of grad school. A professor in my department’s wife had had a baby the day before, on Sunday. On Monday he came into work like it was a normal day.

By Julie Charbonnier

By Robbin Koenig

Dr. Shruti Naik is an immunologist and postdoctorate researcher at the Fuchs lab at Rockefeller University. She is one of the five recipients of the 2016 L’Oreal USA for Women in Science Fellowship. As a major advocate for women in STEM careers, Dr. Naik was a featured speaker at the 2017 Scientista Symposium.
Dr. Naik’s work focuses on combating inflammatory skin disorders, such as psoriasis and eczema, with adult stem cell treatments. Her research will ultimately contribute to a new approach for treatment. She describes her research in the following question and answer dialog.

By Robbin Koenig

Heather Shapiro was a featured speaker at the 2017 Scientista Symposium. She has a B.S. from Duke University in Statistical Science and Computer Science. Currently, Heather is a technical evangelist at Microsoft Corp. in New York City, working with the software development community. A brief Q & A reveals that Heather is far from the stereotypical “geek.”

By Robbin Koenig

Do you have a flair for graphics and design? Do you have a gift for the printed word? Are you interested in a career path that requires strengths in both right brain and left brain functions?

By Lidiya Angelova

I’ve been fortunate in that I’ve had the opportunity to meet scientists from all parts of the world, and I’ve made a few observations: people from the US and Asia tend not to spend much time on communicating during coffee and lunch breaks; but Africans, Australians and South Americans are more like the Europeans, who treat meals more socially.

By Lauren Koenig
 
It often seems there’s no longer any traditional path for pursuing a career outside medicine or law. The average individual is expected to hold about 12 jobs before the age of 48, and this number is drastically rising as job and tenure prospects change.

By Lidiya Angelova-Duleva
 
The 2016 US presidential election is over, and as it has many other women and scientists, it has left me shaken. I will never forget what it was like to watch it happen: sheer disbelief. I didn’t understand: Why would people prefer a president who doesn’t accept women as equals? Will people ever accept that a woman can be leader of the United States? I felt lost. I felt violated. I mourned—not because the president will be from “that” party or because the female candidate didn't win; I was devastated because the new president contradicts all the ideals for which we have been fighting for so long: that women have equal worth and that we can be whoever and whatever we want to be.

By Gabrielle-Ann Torre and Amanda G. Riojas

Ideas are critical to science.
 
Incidentally, science is also a male-dominated field.
 
The complexity of gender roles in the workforce means that even in the most progressive settings, many factors can prevent ideas by women from achieving their deserved recognition. For instance, women are more frequently interrupted and less likely to demand credit for their ideas than men. In many STEM jobs, ideas are the major currency: success in science is measured by the novelty and value of our ideas and how these are presented.