Women in Physics - Nadya Mason

I want to spotlight every so often, underrepresented groups in the sciences, especially fields like physics, math, computer science, and different areas of engineering, which are the big fields that still have the largest gaps in diversity - meaning lower numbers of women and people of color who take on those disciplines as majors, and who end up working in those fields. The situation is a little better since I was in graduate school in physics nearly thirty years ago, where professors were certainly predominately white and Asian men, but let's celebrate progress when we see some.

One of the rising stars in physics works at my alma mater, UIUC. Nadya Mason is an African-American woman who is a world expert in quantum mechanical nanocircuitry and is heavily involved in getting more minorities into the highest levels of STEM work, and was recently interviewed for an alum publication. She also has a TED talk outlining her work, and I recommend watching it since she talks about our gap and fear between the technologies we use everyday and our near complete ignorance of how they work.