 Ann Jackson, president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Judith Rodin, president of the Rockefeller Foundation; and Shirley Tilghman, president of Princeton University. Women also hold high-level positions in science organizations run by the government. For example, Donna J. Dean, president of the Association for Women in Science and senior science adviser at Lewis-Burke Associates, LLC, points out that at the U.S. National Institutes of Health four of 27 institute directors are women: Patricia Grady, director of the National Institute of Nursing Research; Story C. Landis, director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke; Nora D. Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse; and Elizabeth G. Nabel, director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. In scientific and engineering industries, women can also be found in leadership roles: including Stephanie Burns, chairman and chief executive officer of Dow Corning; Susan Desmond-Hellmann, president of product development at Genentech; and Una Ryan, chief executive officer at AVANT Immunotherapeutics.
Nonetheless, even successful women in science see the field as male dominated. “I’m not aware of any area in academics, government, or industry in which many women hold top positions,” says Cris Lewis, head of biochemical pharmacology in small-molecule drug discovery at Genentech. “Women are still clearly in the minority.” Still, opportunities do exist for women. “While not all women aspire to management and upper level positions,” says Janice Kameir, vice president of human resources at Diversa, “the opportunities are there if women take responsibility for their own career success.” She adds, “Throughout industry, there are women in management roles in scientific research and business, but we need to actively find ways to support and encourage women who want to move ahead in our industry.”
In part, having role models can encourage young women to enter and stick with science. Lesley Murray, associate director of translational oncology at Genentech, says, “My path may have been somewhat unusual, since I had mostly female supervisors and mentors, and have also had the privilege of knowing many inspiring women in very senior positions as strong role models.” That experience gives Murray a positive outlook. She says, “Opportunities for women to rise to the top clearly exist in industry, and I have personally never encountered any prejudice because of my gender.”
Young women interested in careers in science or engineering would also benefit from seeing more female role models covered in the media. This year, one pair of women scientists—Elizabeth H. Blackburn of the University of California, San Francisco, and Carol W. Greider of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine—gained considerable publicity as winners of the 2006 Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research. That kind of recognition helps aspiring women scientists and engineers think positive and think big.
A Call to Computing
Some areas—including computer science—look very appealing for women in the future. Cynthia Breazeal, associate professor of media arts and sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab, says, “This is an incredibly rich area careerwise.” She believes that young students might bypass this field because they think it’s just about sitting down and programming. “In principle,” Breazeal says, “this field can be applied to many different disciplines. As in any field, computer science is a constellation of techniques and theories and methodologies. It is much broader than simply learning C++ or Java.”
To encourage students to take up computing, Breazeal believes that introductory courses must take a new approach. Students should be shown the ties between programming and exciting fields, including artificial intelligence, multimedia applications, robotics, and so on. “We need to make it engaging, tangible, and more exciting,” says Breazeal. In part, that means getting students into labs where they can see computing in action. “This fi