..read more

Our annual STEM Circuits kickoff event will feature best strategies to implement during a job search! Register HERE! About this event Happy Fall! As the 2021-22 academic year begins, our initiative remains committed to providing career and professional development opportunities to support local early-career women in STEM. Hence, our monthly mentorship program, STEM Circuits, will kick-off virtually this fall on October 21, 2021 with an informative discussion on strategizing your job search. The session will be led by Dr. Tracy Costello, a career coach and professional development trainer acros ..read more

My name is Emma Pollner and I am currently a research coordinator at Northwestern University’s Mesulam Center for Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer’s Disease. I serve on our Clinical Core study, which is a national longitudinal and observational study following patients with various dementias as well as people who exhibit normal aging. We see our participants once a year to collect cognitive and quality of life data, as well as biomarker data through blood, cerebrospinal fluid, and imaging. We track the progression of symptoms during life (or lack thereof) and when our participants pass away ..read more

Hello! My name is Aisha Qazi and I am a second year PhD student in the Graduate Education in Medical Studies (GEMS) program at the University of Illinois at Chicago. As a member of Dr. Ravinder Gill’s lab, we investigate the various roles of intracellular serotonin in intestinal inflammation and gastrointestinal diseases such as Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, and irritable bowel syndromes (IBS). I am particularly interested in elucidating the role of the serotonin transporter (SERT) in gut metabolism and absorption of essential amino acids during intestinal inflammation, as well the con ..read more

Hi! My name is Shabana Shaik and I am a postdoctoral scholar at Sisodia Lab in the department of Neurobiology, The University of Chicago. My research focuses on exploring sex-specific mechanisms of neuro-immune modulation by gut microbiome using Alzheimer’s mice models. This work will unravel critical lacunae in our understanding of host microbiome-CNS interactions and could provide a wealth of unrecognized targets that would allow sex-specific therapeutic strategies for neurodegenerative disorders. I hold a deep passion for nucleic acid-based diagnostics and therapeutics which was ignited th ..read more

Hello! I am Anusree Natraj, a Chemistry PhD student at Northwestern University. I graduated cum laude in 2019 from Washington University in St. Louis with a BA in Chemistry (primary) and Spanish (secondary). I was born and raised in Mumbai, India. My grandparents were chemists (my grandpa an industrial research scientist and my grandma a college professor), and their love for science inspired me as a young girl to pursue a scientific education and career. After joining Prof. Jonathan Barnes’ lab at Wash.U., I was further propelled to pursue research in chemistry. In 2019, my undergraduate res ..read more

I am the Director of Freshwater Research at Shedd Aquarium and I oversee a team of biologists focused on addressing wildlife conservation concerns in the Great Lakes region, while also leading a research program focused on migratory fishes. Though the outdoors have always been a special place to explore, my passion for the aquatic world was sparked from a snorkeling experience during an undergraduate field course in Jamaica where I was befriended by a fairy basslet, a colorful fish, that lingered near my mask during my first snorkel to local reefs. From that point on, I turned my attention to ..read more

Hi! My name is Qining Wang (she/her). I am a third-year graduate student in the chemistry department at Northwestern University. Jointly advised by Professor Joe Hupp and Professor Justin Notestein, my work focuses on investigating the fundamental aspects of gas-phase catalysts using a class of material named metal-organic framework (MOF). By synthesizing MOF-supported catalysts with uniform and well-defined structures, I hope to establish structural-functional relationships of the catalysts with their reactivity, which would provide insights in designing catalysts with more controllable prop ..read more

I am Monika Filipovska, a Ph.D. Candidate in the Transportation Systems Analysis and Planning program at the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northwestern University. My research interests broadly fall in the areas of transportation network modeling, intelligent transportation systems, and connected and automated transportation technologies. My current dissertation research focuses on modeling travel time reliability in transportation networks and finding reliable paths and routing solutions with access to en-route information. A presentation of a paper from my dissertatio ..read more

A recent publication in Nature Communications on early-career informal mentorship [1] has caused scientists to take to the internet to express their discontent. Why, you ask? The authors of the paper concluded that junior female scientists benefit greatly from senior male mentorship and suffer if they have a female mentor. On the other hand, female mentors also seem to compromise their academic success by having female, instead of male, mentees. In a nutshell, you are unlikely to succeed in STEM as a woman. Many, including me, believed this paper should be retracted. The calls for retraction o ..read more