By Nicole Hellessey

Nicole Hellessey (right) and Swan Li San Sow (left) on the back deck of the RV Investigator during the P15South voyage May, 2016. Picture provided by Nicole Hellessey © Nicole Hellessey May 2016

By Gabrielle-Ann Torre

Early this year, I attended the NIH Annual Career Symposium in Bethesda, Maryland. At the panel for science communication, Dr. Yaihara Fortis livened the room: young and articulate, she challenged my expectation of a dull day of career advice. Dr. Fortis, who works in the Career Development branch for The New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS), received her Ph.D. in Neuroscience at Brandeis University, where she studied the neural bases of the link between taste (food preferences) and smell (olfactory cues). This work resulted in a publication in Nature Neuroscience, a feat aspired to by even tenured scientists. Read below for her generous advice and insight on life as a Scientista:

By Nikita Raina

Engineer, physician, entrepreneur, cancer researcher, scholar, professor, wife, mother, yoga and book enthusiast, trailblazer in the STEM field. It’s not every day that we see these prestigious labels used to describe one woman. Sangeeta Bhatia has pioneered the world of biotechnology, setting an example of accomplishments, breakthroughs, and innovation that inspires women of all backgrounds to set foot in the diverse field of science, technology, mathematics, and engineering today.

By Lauren Koenig
 
What do you want to be when you grow up?
 
CuSTEMized founder and developer Jean Fan wants to explore the answer to that question in a revolutionary way.

By Heather Burkhart

I recently had the privilege of speaking with Dr. Gaia Vasiliver-Shamis, the Director of Career Development for Postdoctoral Fellows at Emory University School of Medicine, and what she likes to call a “non-practicing” scientist. She may not currently be doing her own research, but she hasn’t forgotten what it’s like. Her dedication to helping scientists everywhere succeed is a true inspiration to all of us who wish to make the world a better place; and not only that, but the very assistance she gives others in turn creates the possibility for scientists to get out there and do what they’re meant to do and improve the world themselves. We all know what is said about karma, but she can nevertheless be perfectly lovely at times.

By Detina Zalli

We Speak Science (WSS) is a non-profit science education institute, established in 2014 by Dr. Detina Zalli (Harvard University) and Dr. Argita Zalli (Imperial College London). It has a mission to enhance science education in developing neighborhoods throughout the world whereby science education is severely lacking. In October 2015, WSS launched a competition for the best science poster. 1,256 undergraduate and graduate students participated in the WSS competition from all over the world, among these, the USA, UK, Italy, Macedonia, France, Greece, Finland, Netherlands, Albania, and Kosovo. The posters were judged by scientists and lecturers in Harvard University. Although the level of the participants was very high and the covered topics were very interesting, one student from Albania stood out with the quality of her works.

By Dr. Lidiya Angelova-Duleva

I heard about Dr. Martha Sedegah for the first time when I was a postdoc in a malaria research lab at the National Institutes of Health, Rockville, MD. I was inspired by her success in such a competitive area as malaria research.

Dr. Sedegah is a Principal Investigator, Director of Clinical Immunology, and Director of Parasitology at the U.S. Naval Medical Research Center (NMRC) in Silver Spring, MD. Dr. Sedegah is also faculty as a mentor for the Postdoctoral Program at the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (NMIMR), and an Adjunct Professor at the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Maryland at Baltimore, School of Medicine, Baltimore MD, where she was a Research Assistant Professor. She also collaborates with Sanaria Inc., a biotech company whose only mission is to develop an effective malaria vaccine that will prevent death from this terrible disease. Dr. Sedegah’s research interest at the NMRC is focused on detecting advanced epitope-based malaria vaccines. Her work gives hope to millions of people infected with malaria every year; however, a vaccine is still not available because of the complicated parasite life cycle and its ability to gain resistance to new drugs very quickly.

By Gabrielle-Ann Torre

When you walk into Dr. Guinevere Eden’s lab, the Center for the Study of Learning at Georgetown University, you sense warmth. Crayon drawings on the walls and stuffed animals on the couches welcome the lab’s major research participants: children. Dr. Eden, a professor in the Department of Pediatrics, is a forerunner in the field of dyslexia, participating in the first study to use fMRI to examine the neural basis of this disorder, and her lab investigates how we read and learn in development. With two children of her own, in addition to the “children” of the lab—grad students and research interns—Dr. Eden embodies a female role model in science. Keep reading for her insights on the importance of these role models and how she became one herself:
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By Dianna Cowern

Back in 5th grade, my school held a competition to create art for the cover of the yearbook. Out of 300 students, my painting won. I liked to think that I was adequate at making pastel copies of Picasso, but I wouldn't say I was a talented artist. There was something unique about that painting though, something that has stayed with me throughout my career; it combined the beauty of science with art. The painting was of exoplanets and the cosmos. 

Bridging the gap between science and art is not something that I was always open to. My first passions were math and science and I tended to push away activities that were purely artistic. I tried, and dropped, hula, ceramics, ballet, sculpting, acting, and painting. Then I found iMovie, Apple’s basic video-editing software.
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By Ali Hagen

They found a passion for STEM at different ages and followed different paths, but Alexandra Diracles and Melissa Halfon found each other at just the right moment. Little did they know at Startup Weekend EDU in January 2014, their collaboration would continue and evolve into Vidcode, a remarkable start-up company that teaches tween and teen girls to code through video editing.