Tip of the Iceberg
APS asks a scientist...
The APS surveyed Members who are female scientists to learn more about their lives and career paths. We asked paleoanthropologist Leslie Aiello (APS 2014, APS Curator of Art and Material Culture):
What has the role of others, such as mentors and peers, been in your career?
I don't think that I have ever had a formal “mentor” but have benefited greatly from a series of very supportive friends and colleagues, who have given me both advice and support when it was needed—including an ever-supportive husband who had the confidence in me and our relationship to let me follow my passions. Perhaps most importantly was the encouragement I received to make the leap out of academia into the NY not-for-profit world. The Dean of the Medical School at UCL actually told me that he was so happy that I was making the leap while I was still young enough to enjoy and make a success of a new life—he obviously had waited too long. But it was the people who made me realize that there were alternatives and new worlds to explore at all stages of my career for which I am most grateful. All I had to do was decide where I wanted to go—and do it!
Sabrina Elkassas
Lewis and Clark Fund in Astrobiology Field Scholars, 2021-2022
Sabrina Elkassas is a graduate student in The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) Joint Program where she studies life in extreme environments. She participated in a 2022 research cruise for her project: “Methanogens at the Serpentinite Mud Volcanoes of the Mariana Forearc: A Missing Piece of the Puzzle?”.
During this trip, she collected samples of fluid from within underwater mud volcanoes, an extreme, high pH environment. She began cultivating these samples to isolate any alkaliphilic methanogens (microorganisms that like high pH environments and produce methane) for further research in the lab. She also conducted isotopic incubations to measure the metabolic rate of a single alkaliphilic methanogenic microbial cell, which has never been done before in this environment. Her work has direct ties to current efforts in astrobiology. Due to similarities in environment, her findings on marine alkaliphilic methanogens may provide parameters and potential evidence in the search for life on Saturn's moon, Enceladus. In the future, she hopes to continue her work with extremophiles, expanding to other marine environments relevant for the search for life beyond Earth.
Carla Shatz
APS Member, elected 1997
Carla Shatz, the Sapp Family Provostial Professor, Catherine Holman Johnson Director of Stanford Bio-X, and Professor of Biology and Neurobiology at Stanford University, is a leader in neuroscience research. She became interested in the science of vision as an undergraduate at Radcliffe College. Driven by her innate curiosity and the support of her family and mentors, she pursued a career in the new field of neuroscience.
Her research has been pivotal to understanding how the brain wires itself during development. Studying the early formation of connections between eye and brain, she discovered that adult patterns of precise connections are not present initially. Rather, even before the rods and cones form, adult connections emerge from immature ones during a process in which the brain tests the fidelity of neural pathways and remodels connections accordingly. Her continuing research into neural signaling and brain circuit remodeling has been influential in other areas of study including Alzheimer's disease in which connections are lost, leading to memory and cognitive decline.
She has held many leadership positions and is passionate about mentoring and supporting the next generation of scientists. Dr. Shatz has worked to deconstruct sexist and exclusionary policies and to create community and opportunities for new scientists. Currently, she serves as the director of Bio-X at Stanford, a highly collaborative, interdisciplinary research center.
APS asks a scientist...
The APS surveyed Members who are female scientists to learn more about their lives and career paths. We asked anthropologist Dr. Nina Jablonksi (APS 2009, APS Vice President):
As an APS Member, you have been recognized for your significant contributions to your fields. Please describe the obstacles, opportunities, or defining moments that led to your success.
Obstacles, opportunities, and defining moments are always recognized in retrospect, and many of them don't emerge as clear punctuation marks until many years after they occurred. The biggest obstacle I have had to overcome is my own lack of discipline; it has taken a lifetime of (ongoing) effort to learn how to "grasp the nettle" and just get down to doing the work that needs to be done. Realizing that a project, once started, is much more fun and much less of an obstacle than one had thought makes it all worthwhile. Two opportunities strike me as having been of signal importance. The first was having the opportunity to travel and live overseas as an exchange student through an American Field Service award. I spent the summer between my junior and senior years of high school as an exchange student in Belgium, an experience that introduced me to the immense joy of being with people from other cultures and backgrounds. It also contributed to my love of travel and having a perpetually "loose foot," as my mother described it. The second opportunity of great importance had to do with my first job after my doctorate. As I was finishing my Ph.D. in early 1981, I was offered interviews for academic positions in Florida and Hong Kong. I was 27 years old at the time, and decided to only pursue the opportunity in Hong Kong, saying to myself, "I can work in Florida when I'm 50." That decision led to my learning Chinese and devoting much of my time and effort as a junior scientist to work on a variety of projects, some still ongoing, in China. I have yet to work in Florida, and have never regretted my decision to pursue a more risky and less certain career path overseas.
