ABSTRACT
Gender inequality in STEM fields remains pervasive and undermines the ability for talented individuals to excel. Despite advances, women still encounter obstacles in pursuing academic careers and reaching leadership positions. This commentary discusses the "scissor-shaped curve" and examines effective strategies to fix it, including data-driven initiatives that we have implemented at our university.
Subject(s)
Academia , Gender Equity , Humans , Female , Leadership , UniversitiesABSTRACT
Undergraduate students generally need laboratory skills and experience to be accepted into a position within an academic lab or a company. However, those settings are traditionally where students would develop that necessary expertise. We developed a laboratory course paradigm to equip students with the skills they need to access future opportunities.
Subject(s)
Students , Humans , Universities , Research/education , Curriculum , LaboratoriesABSTRACT
Dr. Hannah Valantine is renowned for her work in transplantation medicine, leadership, and mentoring as well as her efforts to improve scientific workforce diversity. In this interview with Cell, she discusses her research; what Juneteenth means to her; the persistent gender, race, and ethnicity leadership gaps that exist in academic medicine; and the importance of equitable, inclusive, and diverse science.
Subject(s)
Mentoring , Humans , Female , Universities , Mentors , LeadershipABSTRACT
Historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) offer high-quality education and produce leaders from various backgrounds, mainly being African American. Predominately White institutions can utilize practices that make HBCUs successful to mentor and graduate students of all backgrounds. We also suggest ways to bolster HBCUs so they can train more students.
Subject(s)
Black or African American , Students , Achievement , Humans , UniversitiesABSTRACT
Cancers display significant heterogeneity with respect to tissue of origin, driver mutations, and other features of the surrounding tissue. It is likely that individual tumors engage common patterns of the immune system-here "archetypes"-creating prototypical non-destructive tumor immune microenvironments (TMEs) and modulating tumor-targeting. To discover the dominant immune system archetypes, the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Immunoprofiler Initiative (IPI) processed 364 individual tumors across 12 cancer types using standardized protocols. Computational clustering of flow cytometry and transcriptomic data obtained from cell sub-compartments uncovered dominant patterns of immune composition across cancers. These archetypes were profound insofar as they also differentiated tumors based upon unique immune and tumor gene-expression patterns. They also partitioned well-established classifications of tumor biology. The IPI resource provides a template for understanding cancer immunity as a collection of dominant patterns of immune organization and provides a rational path forward to learn how to modulate these to improve therapy.
Subject(s)
Censuses , Neoplasms/genetics , Neoplasms/immunology , Transcriptome/genetics , Tumor Microenvironment/immunology , Biomarkers, Tumor , Cluster Analysis , Cohort Studies , Computational Biology/methods , Flow Cytometry/methods , Gene Expression Regulation, Neoplastic , Humans , Neoplasms/classification , Neoplasms/pathology , RNA-Seq/methods , San Francisco , UniversitiesABSTRACT
Dr. Chrystal Starbird is the winner of the first Rising Black Scientist Award for a post-graduate scholar. For this award, we asked emerging Black scientists to tell us about the experiences that sparked their journey in the life sciences. This is her story.
Subject(s)
Racism , Universities , Black or African American , Awards and Prizes , HumansABSTRACT
Diversity within science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) remains disturbingly low. Relative to larger, highly funded universities, smaller schools harbor more diverse student demographics and more limited resources. Here, we propose four strategies leveraging the unique advantages of smaller institutions to advance underrepresented scholars along STEM pathways.
Subject(s)
Cultural Diversity , Engineering , Mathematics , Science , Technology , Universities , Curriculum , Education, Graduate , Faculty , Humans , Mentors , ResearchABSTRACT
Virtual interviewing has become ubiquitous with the academic job market. Here, we highlight the best practices for candidates and departments to consider when using virtual interviewing. We propose how virtual interviews can be leveraged and adapted for hybrid academic job searches combining virtual and in-person activities in a post-pandemic world.
Subject(s)
Employment , Interviews as Topic , Universities , COVID-19/epidemiology , Career Choice , Faculty , HumansABSTRACT
Communal discussions on anti-racism and inclusion are crucial to addressing the history of racism in scientific communities. Unfortunately, universities are not universally implementing these conversations. We provide a blueprint for initiating and executing student-led discussions to empower young scientists to take action toward making science more welcoming and inclusive.
Subject(s)
Communication , Racism , Education, Graduate , Humans , Minority Groups , Students , UniversitiesABSTRACT
We identify problematic areas throughout the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) pipeline that perpetuate racial disparities in academia. Distinct ways to curtail these disparities include early exposure and access to resources, supportive mentoring networks and comprehensive training programs specifically for racially minoritized students and trainees at each career stage. These actions will revitalize the STEM pipeline.
Subject(s)
Engineering/education , Mathematics/education , Science/education , Technology/education , Education, Graduate , Humans , UniversitiesABSTRACT
The COVID19 crisis has magnified the issues plaguing academic science, but it has also provided the scientific establishment with an unprecedented opportunity to reset. Shoring up the foundation of academic science will require a concerted effort between funding agencies, universities, and the public to rethink how we support scientists, with a special emphasis on early career researchers.
Subject(s)
Career Mobility , Research Personnel/trends , Research/trends , Achievement , Biomedical Research , Humans , Research Personnel/education , Science/education , Science/trends , UniversitiesABSTRACT
Knowledge of the parameters of drug development can greatly aid academic scientists hoping to partner with pharmaceutical companies. Here, we discuss the three major pillars of drug development-pharmacodynamics, pharmacokinetics, and toxicity studies-which, in addition to pre-clinical efficacy, are critical for partnering with Big Pharma to produce novel therapeutics.
Subject(s)
Drug Delivery Systems , Drug Design , Animals , Clinical Trials as Topic , Drug Evaluation, Preclinical , Humans , Pharmacokinetics , UniversitiesABSTRACT
Twenty-first century biomedical research is advantaged by institutional infrastructures that foster a collaborative, multidisciplinary approach. A few critical elements in the design of labs, research buildings, or campus can make interaction easier while preserving privacy and comfort for the individual researcher.
Subject(s)
Biomedical Research , Laboratories , Academies and Institutes , Biomedical Research/instrumentation , History, 19th Century , History, 20th Century , History, 21st Century , Laboratories/history , Laboratories/trends , UniversitiesABSTRACT
The translation of medically relevant academic inventions that could transform public health has been notoriously difficult, stemming largely from cultural differences been academia and industry. New initiatives to kindle academic entrepreneurship and establish stronger public/private partnerships are helping to align these differences and accelerating the translation of promising new therapies.
Subject(s)
Academies and Institutes , Biomedical Research , Public-Private Sector Partnerships , Biomedical Research/economics , Biomedical Research/education , Diagnostic Techniques and Procedures , Drug Discovery , Equipment and Supplies , UniversitiesABSTRACT
Hiring committees address the glut of highly qualified applicants for faculty positions by experimenting with new evaluation methods and adapting their expectations for today's increasingly competitive academic environment.
Subject(s)
Cell Biology , Molecular Biology , Research Personnel , Universities , Cell Biology/trends , Job Application , Molecular Biology/education , Molecular Biology/trends , PublishingABSTRACT
Faculty hiring and retention determine the composition of the US academic workforce and directly shape educational outcomes1, careers2, the development and spread of ideas3 and research priorities4,5. However, hiring and retention are dynamic, reflecting societal and academic priorities, generational turnover and efforts to diversify the professoriate along gender6-8, racial9 and socioeconomic10 lines. A comprehensive study of the structure and dynamics of the US professoriate would elucidate the effects of these efforts and the processes that shape scholarship more broadly. Here we analyse the academic employment and doctoral education of tenure-track faculty at all PhD-granting US universities over the decade 2011-2020, quantifying stark inequalities in faculty production, prestige, retention and gender. Our analyses show universal inequalities in which a small minority of universities supply a large majority of faculty across fields, exacerbated by patterns of attrition and reflecting steep hierarchies of prestige. We identify markedly higher attrition rates among faculty trained outside the United States or employed by their doctoral university. Our results indicate that gains in women's representation over this decade result from demographic turnover and earlier changes made to hiring, and are unlikely to lead to long-term gender parity in most fields. These analyses quantify the dynamics of US faculty hiring and retention, and will support efforts to improve the organization, composition and scholarship of the US academic workforce.
Subject(s)
Faculty , Personnel Selection , Universities , Workforce , Education, Graduate/statistics & numerical data , Employment/statistics & numerical data , Faculty/statistics & numerical data , Female , Humans , Male , Personnel Selection/statistics & numerical data , Racial Groups/statistics & numerical data , Socioeconomic Factors , United States , Universities/statistics & numerical data , Women , Workforce/statistics & numerical dataABSTRACT
Low levels of social interaction across class lines have generated widespread concern1-4 and are associated with worse outcomes, such as lower rates of upward income mobility4-7. Here we analyse the determinants of cross-class interaction using data from Facebook, building on the analysis in our companion paper7. We show that about half of the social disconnection across socioeconomic lines-measured as the difference in the share of high-socioeconomic status (SES) friends between people with low and high SES-is explained by differences in exposure to people with high SES in groups such as schools and religious organizations. The other half is explained by friending bias-the tendency for people with low SES to befriend people with high SES at lower rates even conditional on exposure. Friending bias is shaped by the structure of the groups in which people interact. For example, friending bias is higher in larger and more diverse groups and lower in religious organizations than in schools and workplaces. Distinguishing exposure from friending bias is helpful for identifying interventions to increase cross-SES friendships (economic connectedness). Using fluctuations in the share of students with high SES across high school cohorts, we show that increases in high-SES exposure lead low-SES people to form more friendships with high-SES people in schools that exhibit low levels of friending bias. Thus, socioeconomic integration can increase economic connectedness in communities in which friending bias is low. By contrast, when friending bias is high, increasing cross-SES interactions among existing members may be necessary to increase economic connectedness. To support such efforts, we release privacy-protected statistics on economic connectedness, exposure and friending bias for each ZIP (postal) code, high school and college in the United States at https://www.socialcapital.org .
Subject(s)
Economic Status , Friends , Geographic Mapping , Schools , Social Capital , Social Class , Students , Datasets as Topic , Economic Status/statistics & numerical data , Humans , Income/statistics & numerical data , Prejudice/statistics & numerical data , Schools/statistics & numerical data , Social Media/statistics & numerical data , Students/statistics & numerical data , United States , Universities/statistics & numerical dataABSTRACT
In this perspective I look back on the twists and turns that influenced the direction of my scientific career over the past 40 years. From my early ambition to be a chemist to my training in Philadelphia and Bethesda as a molecular biologist, I benefited enormously from generous and valuable mentoring. In my independent career in Philadelphia and Princeton, I was motivated by a keen interest in the changes in gene expression that direct the development of the mammalian embryo and inspired by the creativity and energy of my students, fellows, and research staff. After twelve years as President of Princeton University, I have happily returned to the faculty of the Department of Molecular Biology.