Women enjoying science and technology
At Caltech [in Pasadena, CA], a record number of women have enrolled this fall… 87 women are entering a freshman class of 206 students in September. That 37% share is Caltech’s highest since it began admitting undergraduate women in 1970, when pioneering females comprised 14% of the entering class. [Photo no longer available: Incoming freshman Elizabeth Mak, 18, mixes food for fruit flies for a bacterial colonization experiment at the science and engineering school.]
[From Caltech chemistry improves, By Larry Gordon, Los Angeles Times, August 6, 2007.]
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“Due to my lack of enthusiasm for class work, it is a little surprising that I should have gone into physics. But once the abstract part of science was explained to me in terms of the concrete components.. then it all seemed to make sense….
“E = mc2 is incredibly well known… it might be a bit surprising to learn we actually use it outside the classroom…. without Einstein and our understanding of The Equation, I wouldn’t have a job. Well, I would have a job somewhere, I hope, but I probably wouldn’t be having as much fun.”
Caolionn O’Connell, PhD, from the page Science and talent
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“When I entered UCLA, I thought majoring in film would be the natural course for someone like me, since I’d spent my teenage years in front of a camera. Then fate intervened. I took a math class on a whim one semester. I liked how it felt when my mind opened up and started churning to solve a tough problem”
From article: Danica McKellar on the power and beauty of math.
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Davidson Fellow Laureate Alexandra Courtis, 17 - her project title is “Bright Luminescent Silicon Nanoparticles for Biological Applications.”
She “developed a new method of creating luminescent silicon nanorods and quantum dots, used in biomedical imaging and cancer treatments to track biological processes.”
[From Davidson Institute profile]
