CONGRATULATIONS Girls! And Boys!

Those winners, and indeed all the participants in the competition, deserve our cheers.

As most readers of this blog know, I have a special interest in "Women's Adventures in Science."

Click my name for my most recent blog entry about the work of Heidi Hammel, whose young readers' biography I had the honor to write (links at the blog entry for that).

December 7 will see a once-in-42-years solar system event, the Uranian equinox, and Heidi will be observing it using some of the world's best telescopes. Meanwhile, some of her male colleagues will be scoping out the moons of Mars.

Happy Uranian equinox, boys and girls! And stay tuned for news from Deimos and Phobos!

Sheril,
Thanks for this news. I read the story and was struck by this snippet:

Three-quarters of the finalists have a parent who is a scientist. The parents of Alicia Darnell, who won second place, are medical researchers at Rockefeller University, and her maternal grandparents were scientists, too. Isha Himani Jain, who took home the top individual prize, published her first research paper with her father, a professor at Lehigh University, when she was 10 or 11; her mother is a doctor.

This fact is slightly worrying to me. What about students who don't have the benefit of a parent is a scientist? Who will draw these students - who are likely equally talented in science as their peers in the Siemens competition - into high-octane science, math, and engineering opportunities early on? Students who have a parent that works as a scientist already have a huge advantage over their peers in terms of exposure to the sciences (how many researchers would take on a 10 or 11 year old co-author?) and, from the statistic given in the article, access to competitions (after all, you have to know about the competitions in order to enter, and not having a parent or other mentor to help direct information about these activities to you means that you are less likely to find out about them). While some programs such as EnvironMentors attempt to reach students at the high school level, we should also be thinking creatively about how to get even younger students involved in science.

Kudos to these young ladies, and to all the contestants. Well done. It is always encouraging to see young people with a keen interest in science.

The news does, however, highlight a disturbing trend in science in recent years: the loss of men from the pipeline. Sounds strange, I know, but it is really striking, as can be attested by university faculty nationwide. The gender ratio of students entering our graduate program (in marine science) in recent years has been steadily skewed towards women. And our summer "Research Experiences for Undergraduates" program has been almost unable to attract a single male student in the last several years! Colleagues at other institutions report similar stories. Admittedly, this is primarily in biological and environmental sciences (there is still a major male domination of physical sciences and engineering) and it is at the entry level, rather than among tenured full professors. But what is going on here? I fear we may be facing a phenomenon that would have seemed unthinkable even a decade ago: males as an underrepresented group in science (?).

BIG CONGRATULATIONS to all who entered this important competition, and especially to all the winners.

This is simply the most exciting news!! I have a granddaughter who is very interested in science. I'm going to forward this blog and related article links to her. What an inspirational story. My congratulations to all the girls involved.

This is such great news! I'm sure this will serve as inspiration for a lot of young women out there :)