Studying exploding binary stars, while exploding the gender binary
2020 threw a spotlight on the importance of science communication. Kate Green spoke to women at the heart of discovery, innovation, and education.
It took 22-year-old Isla Christensen a little while to call herself a scientist. Working for science education company Nanogirl Labs, she’s one of five women trained by Dr Michelle Dickinson, aka Nanogirl, to give educational performances to children around the country.
Recently at a party, a girl asked her, ‘‘Are you a real scientist?’’
‘‘And for the first time, I said, ‘Yeah! I studied for four years, and I am a real scientist’.’’
Christensen gained a conjoint arts and science degree majoring in environmental and biological sciences at the University of Auckland.
But her first experience with science communication was being in the audience of the Youth EnviroLeaders Forum run by the Peter Blake Trust, and listening to speakers from the Department of Conservation and science journalists.
As a mentor and a role model, ‘‘You don’t realise how big an impact it can have on someone.’’
Demand for Nanogirl Labs’ children’s parties increased 500 per cent from September to October.
Michelle Dickinson thought it came from a desire for human interaction.
‘‘This year we weren’t able to perform our live shows, which is the most popular way for children to physically interact with the Nanogirl scientists,’’ she said.
‘‘After lockdown where Zoom calls were the norm, we saw a big increase in requests for inperson shows to try and help children to feel a sense of normality.’’
Christensen enjoyed the hands-on experience with slime and bubbles. The choice of activities sometimes surprised the parents, she said, but science was in everything.
‘‘It’s in baking and predicting the weather. We teach them about making a hypothesis, and they play with slime and bubbles.’’
At age 12, Amelia Lockley was teaching ministers how to write code. At an event held in the Beehive’s banquet hall as part of Techweek ’17, more than 30 students from five primary schools shared their skills in Scratch, a beginner’s coding programme, with ministers.
Amelia, now 16, began her journey into STEM (the catch-all acronym that covers science, technology, engineering and maths subjects) at intermediate, when her parents, concerned about her lack of concentration in class, sent her to get tested for learning difficulties.
They didn’t find any, but she did find digital technology educator The Mind Lab and its holiday programme, where she learned filmmaking, 3D printing, coding and robotics.
Amelia is the co-founder of TechGirls NZ, a group for young Kiwi STEM enthusiasts, along with Mikayla Stokes. They launched after noticing a lack of events targeting teenage girls and their first day-long event in May 2019 featured workshops in LEDs and 3D printing, and industry speakers.
Covid-19 moved them online, and STEM Box was born. This course, still in planning stages, would be spread over multiple weeks, and teach kids basic coding and electronics, wherever they were. ‘‘With where our society is going, we keep progressing further with technology, and for the next generation, all the jobs will be based around technology and STEM.’’
It earned them a TSB Good Stuff grant, and with the support of their mentor, Dickinson, they planned to launch this month.
A study by Engineering New Zealand showed women made up only 11-13 per cent of the engineering workforce, and Amelia had been in computing classes at school where she was the only young woman out of 20 students.
‘‘It’s pretty intimidating,’’ she said. ‘‘I would end up working by myself.’’
Her aim with TechGirls NZ and STEM Box was to make science education accessible and appealing for all.
By way of introduction, theoretical physicist Jan Eldridge likes to say she studies ‘‘exploding binary stars while exploding the myth of a gender binary’’.
Recently named head of the physics department at the University of Auckland, Eldridge is a trans, non-binary woman, going by pronouns she/her, and they/them.
Born in the United Kingdom, she was the first in her family to go to university. Until secondary school, she didn’t even know higher education was an option; after watching Doctor Who and Star Trek, she just knew she wanted to do physics.
She got into Cambridge on her second try, and stayed to do a PhD in astrophysics.
As a trans woman, Eldridge had different worries about being a woman in a STEM career. Would transitioning affect her career?
But since transitioning, she’d been happier, was getting more done, and taking on more students. ‘‘When you stop having to hide or put a mask up or a disguise, you can get on with work.’’
But she was aware of her own good fortune. ‘‘The only time I felt safe to transition was when I’d built up my career.
It really plays on my mind that there are many trans people now who haven’t built up that privilege.’’
She was a part of the university’s rainbow network, where students and faculty alike found support. The group had made some ‘‘really significant changes’’. The university now paid for legal name changes for trans students, preventing misnaming on class rolls.
When offered the role as head of department, it wasn’t until Eldridge spoke with other female heads of departments that she felt she could do it.
‘‘If you can’t see yourself in that job, how do you be that person?’’
There was one trans woman lecturer during Eldridge’s time at Cambridge, and the 90s were a very different environment. ‘‘You’re seeing someone who is like you, but you’re also seeing people being quite negative about them.
‘‘I’m more hopeful for people today. I have students coming through who can be themselves.’’
Parie Malhotra, 21, knows it’s hard to back yourself in an environment where people don’t care if you succeed. She was consistently the only girl on the robotics team. ‘‘When I first started [the seniors] tried to get rid of me, giving me the menial tasks, not talking to me, making me feel like I wasn’t a part of the team.’’
Her dad taught her to solder at the age of six; by nine she’d made her first robot.
By year 13 she was running her school’s robotics programme, managing four or five teams and competing nationally herself.
‘‘I had this junior kid, one of the guys who had built a robot, and I offered him some feedback, and he said ‘Why should I listen to you, what would you know? You’re a girl.’’’
The negativity wasn’t just from her peers. When two school competitions overlapped – robotics, and a master chef contest for home economics, both of which Malhotra was in the extension class for – the teacher in charge gave her an ultimatum; she couldn’t do both, and she should put her energy into cooking class, despite making it to all the meetings for both.
In the end, she didn’t push it. ‘‘I was probably like, ‘whatever, have fun’.
‘‘But we went back to my intermediate school during high school, when we qualified for the world champs, and we talked to the same teacher, who suddenly had so much more respect.’’
The 2015 Robotics World Championship was held in Louisville, Kentucky, and Malhotra had the time of her life. Now she has a newly minted degree in engineering, but the journey had shaped her. ‘‘I’m a lot more thick-skinned.’’
Despite being at the front of the theatre, lecturer Viji Sarojini is adamant she never stops learning. A senior associate professor at the University of Auckland, her ‘‘basic training’’ was in the not-so-basic science of peptide chemistry, the study of short chains of amino acids, with applications in agriculture, biology, medicine, food, and material sciences.
Women were still a minority in the industry, but numbers were growing.
Sarojini was born and raised in Kerala, South India, one of the country’s best performing states in women’s education.
She completed an undergraduate degree at the North India National University in Kerala, her masters at Banaras Hindu University, and her PhD at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore.
Then she headed overseas, first to Sweden, then the University of Leeds, then Texas A&M University. There, ‘‘it was work, work, work. I wanted to do good science, but I needed a better work/life balance.’’
‘‘We’re all human. While we can be ambitious, we have limited energy.’’
When her husband was offered a job at the University of Auckland in 2004, she was happy to move, and joined her husband on the university staff in 2006. Her classes could have up to 1300 students.
‘‘You walk into the lecture theatre, and you have a lot of young minds there looking to learn, and they’re looking up to you.’’
Everyone should be encouraged, especially women from minority backgrounds. ‘‘I’m here today because my family said there is no difference between brother and sister.’’