Abstract

Beginning in the mid-1960s-early 1970s, significant numbers of women students in the US began to major in math and science in college and then to obtain PhDs in these fields. People assumed it was only a question of time before these women would rise to be professors on the science faculties of America’s research universities. But this did not happen nearly as quickly as expected. In 1995, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) appointed a committee of women faculty in Science to analyze barriers to women’s advancement. A summary of the findings was made public in 1999 and came to be known as "The MIT Report". This Report led to many administrative changes at MIT and other universities. The speaker will describe barriers to women’s advancement that were identified, how MIT addressed them administratively, and progress for women faculty in Science and Engineering that resulted. The speaker will also explain why, despite enormous progress, effort will be needed for at least another decade to achieve equity and parity for women faculty in science and engineering in the US.

About the speaker

Prof Nancy Hopkins received her PhD in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry from Harvard University working on phage lambda with Prof Mark Ptashne. She was a postdoctoral fellow with Prof James D Watson and Prof Robert Pollack at the Cold Spring Harbor lab where she worked on DNA tumor viruses. She joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) faculty in 1973, and worked on RNA tumor viruses, identifying genes for host range and leukemogenicity, and then switched fields to work on zebrafish. Her lab developed insertional mutagenesis for the fish and identified many genes involved in development and disease, including cancer. In 1995 Prof Hopkins chaired a committee at MIT that studied the status and under-representation of women faculty in science and issued a public report in 1999. She joined the MIT administration and worked with the President and Provost to address issues identified in the report. She is currently the Amgen, Inc. Professor of Biology at MIT.

Prof Hopkins is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Free and open to the public. Seating is on a first-come first-served basis.

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