Several of our members had the opportunity to attend the Midwest Women in Science Conference earlier this month! This biannual conference is hosted by the Association for Women in Science at the University of Notre Dame and aims to highlight the work of graduate student women.
The keynote speakers were leaders in various STEM fields and, in addition to their research, they discussed their career paths and touched on the issues they faced along the way.
- Dr. Elisa Bertino (Purdue University) researches information and security database systems in medicine and the humanities.
- Dr. Ninez Ponce (UCLA Center for Health Policy Research) leads the California Health Interview Survey and is an expert in immigration and global health.
- Dr. Karen Mulfort (Argonne National Laboratory) designs homo- and heterogeneous supramolecular architectures for solar energy conversion.
The weekend included workshops on expanding your professional network and on developing mentorship skills, as well as several panels of professional women in- and outside of academia.
Two WiC members, Tessa Lynch-Colameta and Julia Murphy, received travel grants to attend the conference and presented their recent work. Tessa gave a talk on Mannich-type reactions of cyclic nitrones, work that is highlighted in her recent publication. Julia presented her work on atomic force microscopy imaging of confined block copolymer nanopatterns and received second place in the oral presentation competition.
Overall, it was a valuable experience for our WiC representatives and we hope that more women at the University of Chicago will have the opportunity to participate in the future. The next Women in Science Conference will be here in Chicago in 2020 and WiC plans to be actively involved in planning and hosting the event!