The Math Boys Clubs: The Visiting Scientist

Yesterday, I met with my supervisor, Dr. Add'EmUp and a visiting scholar, SampleSizeScientist, at SmallUniversity. SampleSizeScientist is a big shot statistical geneticist, who works with data that comes from the most cutting edge technology.

In my field, meeting with visiting scholars is an essential part of the training process of a graduate student or postdoc. There are several reasons why you should participate either in a group meeting or one-one-one time with a visiting scholar. First, the visiting scholar will ask you about your work. Even if the visiting scientist is not directly connected to your field, you will be forced to describe what question you are asking, how you are answering this question, and what results you might have, if any. All in the span of one or two sentences. This is not a simple task, but it gets easier.

If you've done a good job, usually the person will ask a question or two and, I say jump, at the chance to think and discuss your own work with someone more senior than you. Thirdly, sometimes 'talking science' can mean learning to have a conversation with a perfect stranger and/or someone whose work you have admired. One way initiate a conversation is to ask a question about their work - either specific or more general. This means reading one or two papers about their research. This in and of itself, gives you breadth as a scientist, something sorely lacking in my opinion.

Finally, while you may *think* that the visiting scientists work is completely unrelated and therefore irrelevant to your own research, think again. If they've been invited by a member of your department, it's for a reason. So take advantage of the expertise and network like heck. Now I'm not suggesting that if you work on neuroscience in newts you should meet with a particle physicist, but in my field, the type of work people do is quite broad. So I could meet with someone, who is say working on African toads, even though I study processes in SmallandFastUnits. Even if it is just once, there is the minute possibility that I would connect with someone and a collaboration will fall out of the conversation. The other reason. Job prospects.

So I really appreciate that Dr. Add'EmUp invites me to meet with him and the visiting scientist because it means that he cares about mentoring me. Dr.Add'EmUp is unlike most mathematical biologists, in that he wants to understand and implement the biology. For him biological reality matters in his models. They're not negligible error terms that can be ignored.

Although he does use continuous differential equations, much of his work is done with spatially explicit simulations so that he can account for biological complexity. The best thing about the work he does is the synergism between empiricism and theory. In this lab, the empirical work feeds theory which then ultimately feeds back into the empirical work. Its the best use of theory I have witnessed.

The meeting with the two male scientists started off interesting - SampleSize said to Dr. Add'EmUp in a hot danish accent,

"I was really suprised to hear that you had started a lab - I think that's very brave of you."

"Yeah, but it is only possible because I hired excellent people, like my postdoc." (Thanks Add'EmUp!)

And then SampleSize turned to me and asked about the science, we talked briefly and for a while the conversation was engaging. I asked him if he thought that the recent developments in technology had changed the way people were doing science, i.e. are we no longer interested in formulating interesting questions, or are we asking different types of questions, given the magnitude of data we are innundated with? He gave a somewhat satisfactory answer, but then it quickly degenerated into a discussion of stochastic calculus.

Unfortunately, this was the same pattern as our last meeting with another visiting scholar. And although I tried to participate, I'm tongue-tied when it comes to a Stratonovich integral or the Itō integral. I mean WTF? I do biology, people, not math.

For the last 5 minutes of our meeting, I found myself thinking these things.

1. This feels like a math boys club that I'm clearly not a part of. Hmff...I knew there was a reason I hated math.

2. All the people these two have mentioned are men and mathematicians. Sigh!

3. If he's married (and he is because he mentioned his wife several times during the meeting), why the heck doesn't he wear a ring? I wonder what his wife thinks about this?

4. At least I managed to eat breakfast this morning so my stomach won't scare him.

Ah well, there will always be another visiting scientist....

Diversity in Science

Well I just heard that I was nominated as a "Women in Science: 50 Must Read Bloggers" by a website called, Phlebotomy Technician Schools.

Phlebotomy. What the heck is Phlebotomy? Apparently, the practice of collecting blood samples.

(Avoiding the vampire jokes.)

Cool.I'm on The List. So, I scroll down and find that at #35, this is how my blog has been described:

A blog chronicling the saga of a first year African- American postdoc from Canada. Read these engaging posts on her issues with finishing her thesis, race, gender and just being a scientist.

Engaging. Nice.

I have one complaint - Dudes I finished that thesis bitch long ago and defended it. That's why I've entitled the blog, "Canadian girl postdoc in America." Not that I'm ungrateful, but geez, guys I hope you draw blood better than this.

Now on to The Diversity Post.

DNLee over at Urban Science Adventures has introduced a Blog Carnival in honour of Black History month celebrate a person who is a pioneer and/or innovator in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM).

Because of my 'accidental' attraction for mathematicians, I have decided to write about Katherine Okikolu, a black female who is an Associate Professor of Mathematics University of California at San Diego. Well like all good mathematicians, this one is the progeny of a mathematician (her father) and a physicist (her mother). She received her B.A. in Mathematics from Cambridge University in England and earned her Ph.D. at UCLA in 1991. Her post-doctoral experience took her to Princeton and MIT. She landed her faculty position at UCSD in 1997. Dr. Okikolu is the recipient of many prestigious awards like the Sloan Fellowship ($70,000) and the Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers ($500,000). Her research areas include: Classical Analysis, Differential Geometry, Partial Differential Equations and Operator Theory. None of which I have any clue about. Meh.

That sounded like an introduction at some kind of conference. Dry and boring. Yeck. In an attempt to find out more about her, I emailed Dr. Okikolu, but I never heard back.

(Snubbed again by the math world.)

What I think would provide perspective on just how much she has impacted the field of STEM is to look at the stats for 2006 on doctorate holders (NSF report) who are employed at universities and 4-year colleges. Of the full rank Professors in Science and Engineering, 68% are white and male, 24% are white females, and a mere 1.3% are black and female. Asian females do a little better coming in at 1.5%. And of the 5500 mathematicians in the country, of which only 600 are female, I'd say Dr. Okikolu's presence there is impact enough. Like I've said before. Be present.

It was only 66 years ago, when the first black female received a PhD in Mathematics. Euphemia Lofton Haynes. And 30 years ago only 17 black females had earned PhDs in the field of Mathematics. Here is a really cool herstory on black female mathematicians.

So is our academic landscape changing? If the full rank Professors represent the old guard, then we should really look at the Assistant Professors because these are people who have yet to get tenure and are likely to represent new hires. Fourty-four percent are white and male and 30% are made up of white females. Three percent are Asian females and 2.2% are black females.

On the surface, it appears like the numbers have doubled. And, if we assume a constant rate of increase (highly unlikely in these harsh economic times), we'll have to wait at least 10 years before women make up 50% of the science and engineering faculty and well another 12 years more before black women make up 20%.

I'm not holding my breath. Here's why.

Of the 7,693 female graduate students in mathematics and statistics, 347 of them are black. Of the full-time undergraduates enroled at 4-year institutions, 6.5% of them are black females. White males make up 35% of that same population.

The stats speak for themselves, if we want to increase diversity at the top, we must start encouraging and financially supporting lots and lots (not just one or two or ten) of black females at the undergraduate level, graduate level, as postdoctoral scientists and finally as faculty. We will need to support at least twice as many as we aim to have because we already know from experience that it's difficult to keep women in academia.

And there's the rub - despite the fact that Obama promises to "restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost, " it will take a lot more than a one-time stimulus package of $21.5 billion. Throwing money at a problem helps in the short term, but it won't solve the long term attrition rates that continue to reduce the number of females in science.

The answer?

It's obvious. Change the environment.

At present, academia is a white, male, hierarchy that is competitive in the extreme. This winner-take-all mentality is a male construct and as construct it can be dismantled but if 44% of the people in power are white and male, there is no imperative to change.

And frankly, I disagree with DrugMonkey PhysioProf.

Academic science can be a fucking Care Bears tea party. Where there's a will, there's always a way.

Math is my friend. No really...

Okay so the other day, I tried to leave a friend's apartment by using the door that leads to her closet.

It was embarrassing. My navigational dyslexia is a joke among those who know me. For two years, I couldn't leave my office at LargeUniversityinCanada (LUC) without going the wrong way. I used to get lost when I would go for a run, though to be fair, BigCity, Canada, well its a BIG city. I have this wonderful friend who lived right around the corner from me, and when I would take care of her cat, she would give explicit directions how to get to her place, each time.

So all of this got me thinking. Am I really spatially challenged? Perhaps, I'm just spending headspace thinking great thoughts and hence I can't find my way out of a paperbag?

I blame my high school math experience on my current state of navigational dylexia. Math requires spatio-temporal-reasoning. Although the standard line is that women just don't have the same intrinsic ability as men, I think back to my childhood experience of mathematics and it just wasn't pretty. I remember feeling stupid in math class even though my report card for subjects like OAC Calculus and Algebra had A's.

It could also be that math was associated with feelings of embarrassment and inadequacy. My mom (who in general did some awesome things to encourage my love of learning) made these flash cards of multiplication tables (this is before you could buy it in the store). That alone is not a problem but I think she carried them with her everywhere. She used to flash me in the aisles at the grocery store, at breakfast, at the butcher, you name the place and she would flash those cards. Now couple that with our long trips to CottageCountry where, instead of playing ISpy like normal kids, we did math problems. My younger sister much quicker on the mark would always have the answer but my mom would say, "Now YoungerAndSmarter, let your sister answer." (Groan, groan no really its okay if she wants to answer Mom.)

But the nerd grooming didn't end there. No we had a Friday night Journal Club. Yes, you heard me, I said Friday Night Journal Club. Imagine a 16 year-old who, while her peers are partying, stays at home to give presentations on different science topics, things we had learned outside school.

Cough, cough, *nerd*.

So, despite the math phobia that I came to graduate school with, I feel I have come long way. I spent my entire PhD in a lab of math geeks (with the exception of BestFriend and FullofLife though both were really adept at math), led by my supervisor, GeneralSolutionGuru. I can read and understand mathematical models. I learned and developed sophisticated statistical methods which I programmed in a computer language to analyze my data. Yeah me!!

Oh and by the way could you, umm, tell me which way is home, again?