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By Marina Pazin

 In a world where women remain underrepresented in computational math and physics fields, Dr. Kawtar Hafidi has been breaking all the rules. A physicist at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, she has been showing how women can thrive in fields typically dominated by men. She leads by example and promotes success among her students pursuing careers in the sciences.  These characteristics prompted her colleague, John Arrington, to nominate her for AWIS Chicago’s scientist of the month.

For Dr. Hafidi, the path her career would take was apparent to her during adolescence. Born in Morocco, a developing country, she quickly realized that scientific and technological advancement would be critical to drive the country forward, and such developments should come from within.  “My country needs scientists,” she realized.  Drawing on her talent for solving rigorous logical problems that she developed during her high school training, Dr. Hafidi completed her bachelor degree in theoretical physics at Mohammed V. University in her native country in 1995.

One year after receiving her undergraduate degree, Kawtar earned a master’s degree in nuclear physics from the prestigious Paris Sud University in Orsay, France. She was the only Moroccan and, one of the few women in her class. Despite others congratulating her on her accomplishments, Kawtar’s response was “You can congratulate me when I get a PhD.”  With this determination, she entered the Physics department in the French Atomic Agency at Saclay, in France. Kawtar describes maintaining her focus in a highly male-dominated field by saying, “I did not look left or right [in graduate school].  I was always looking straight.” Competing as a woman in a male-dominated arena was of no concern to her, since she had been playing against boys on soccer fields since childhood. She also had a more personal desire for being successful among her male classmates. “My dad had always wanted a boy….All my life I was trying to make him proud…to show him that I can do anything a boy can do,” she recalls.  She used the same competitive approach and desire to make her parents proud throughout graduate school. Unfortunately, Kawtar’s father passed away one year before she received her PhD.

Since receiving her doctorate, Kawtar has been a leading researcher at Argonne National Laboratory, “asking philosophical questions, addressing technical fields in detector and software development.” Expanding on her research interest of understanding the dynamics of subatomic particles (nucleons) and the forces by which they are held together, Kawtar collaborates with a team of scientists to study 3-D distributions of partons (subatomic quarks and gluons) in nucleons and nuclei, by using particle accelerators at Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Virgina, Fermilab in Illinois, and DESY in Hamburg Germany. She is planning on sharing this knowledge with the scientists in her native country, by holding a workshop on Partons in Nucleon and Nuclei in Marrakech, this upcoming autumn. However, she would like to be remembered for more than her scientific accomplishments alone. She also hopes to encourage the next generation. “My graduate students are my children. If I do my job well, we will have more scientists, better scientists.” With this outlook, Dr. Hafidi heads the Women in Science and Technology (WIST) program at Argonne, working with other men and women to hire, retain, and promote women in laboratories, particularly at upper level management. With WIST, she also helps to organize outreach programs for high school and junior high school young women, in which students are exposed to the exciting options of careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Kawtar continues to promote her mission by chairing the American Physical Society Committee on the Status of Women in Physics. For her leadership and dedication to her students, she was recently awarded the U.S. DOE Office of Science Outstanding Mentor award.

 Dr. Hafidi’s career reminds us that women can thrive in areas previously set aside for men, and that promoting the advancement of the next generation of female scientists benefits everyone. For me, she is indeed a role model. 

Nomination by Josh Arrington, Argonne National Laboratory.  Article written by by AWIS Chicago Staff Writer Marina Pazin.

 *Know a scientist you think should be featured in an upcoming “Scientist of the Month” article?  Send nominations to Michelle Merrigan and Carrie Heusner.  Your nominee does not need to be an AWIS member or a woman, but should promote the advancement of women in science, technology, mathematics and engineering.

Want to keep yourself up-to-date on AWIS Chicago activities? Follow AWIS Chicago on Twitter! You can request to be added to our listserve by clicking here, and join the AWIS Chicago group on LinkedIn and Facebook by clicking the icons on the bottom right of this page.

When most of us look at a mountain, we see a monolith that seems unchanging. Geologist Francesca McInerney of Northwestern University sees how a landscape has evolved over millions of years, with features growing and changing, “Like a flipbook through time of ecosystems and organisms changing.” She credits an undergraduate course in Paleobiology at Yale University with introducing her to the long view of the earth’s features. “The thing that interested me at first was large scale temporal and spatial patterns in nature. I always really enjoyed landscapes and how they were created,” she says.

Francesca earned a Bachelor’s degree in Geology and Studies in the Environment from Yale University, and a Master’s degree in Geophysical Sciences from the University of Chicago. She earned her PhD in 2002 from the University of Chicago. Francesca is currently an Assistant Professor of in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Northwestern University.

Francesca’s research investigates the response of plants to changes in climate in the geologic past. Describing how plants responded to past episodes of climate change may inform scientists about how ecosystems may fare in response to current climate change. She also studies how current plants acquire and turn over basic elements such as hydrogen and carbon, so as to better understand how these features are related to climate features such as humidity.

Over the history of the earth, there have been many cycles of climate change, and Francesca studies one particular event, the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), which occurred about 55 million years ago. Global temperatures increased by 5-8 degrees Celsius due to increased carbon in the ocean and atmosphere. “It happened rapidly on a geologic time scale, taking under ten thousand years. We know that from carbon isotopes and deep ocean acidification. It caused major changes in where organisms lived, so there were huge migrations,” she explains. While a concern of modern climate change is the effect it may have on many species, during the PETM, “Not that many groups experienced extinction,” she says. However, one of the main differences is that while the Paleocene-Eocene event took thousands of years, the current change is being accomplished in centuries.

How do scientists determine the environment that a particular plant lived in 55 million years ago? When a plant is alive, it produces wax that covers its leaves and retains moisture. Even after millions of years, when other biological material have been destroyed, some lipids in leaf waxes are still present in the rocks as molecular fossils. And those waxes can tell you about the climate that the plant lived in. In particular, she looks at a component of leaf waxes, straight chain alkanes, one type of which is produced almost exclusively by vascular plants.

Francesca studies vascular plants that lived in the Big Horn basin in Wyoming during the PETM. “Wyoming used to be quite lush and green, 56 million years ago.” To study carbon cycling in terrestrial ecosystems, the rocks must be cleaned and ground up, and the lipids extracted using solvents, heat and pressure. The carbon and hydrogen isotopes in the lipids are analyzed using mass spectrometry. “An isotopically distinct pool of carbon was added to the oceans and atmosphere, and that signal is seen in the oceans and in tooth enamel (of animals), soils, and plants.” On land, there was a larger shift than in the ocean. Francesca explains that, “We are trying to understand what the real global shift was, and why it was different between the terrestrial and marine.” Comparing the isotope profile of the hydrogen in the plants, versus that in the tooth enamel of grazing animals, who also drink surface water, describes how precipitation and humidity may have changed.

She also studies the relationship between the environment and the cycling of carbon and hydrogen isotopes in modern plants in collaboration with the Chicago Botanic Garden. Studying current plants helps to calibrate standards for paleontological samples.

In her laboratory, she has two PhD students, one Masters student and “a slew of undergrads.” She describes herself as an informal but involved mentor, characterized by a lot of contact, both at Northwestern and in the field. “I meet frequently with the lab group as a whole and with each student individually.“ She also promotes the students mentoring each other, with the graduate students mentoring the undergraduates.

Her teaching duties include undergraduate courses on Paleobiology, which deals with the history of life through geologic time, and introduces the methods to study the evolution of ecosystems. She also teaches a freshman seminar titled “Global Warming: The Scientific Evidence.” She says, “I like them both because they’re both fairly inter-disciplinary in what you talk about.” She also teaches graduate seminars in stable isotope ecology and paleoecology.

Describing her work, Francesca says she’d always been interested in environmental issues and conservation, but that had not been a direct driver of her research until recently. She says, “It’s come full-circle. I was initially interested in very local environmental issues, and found my interest in geology was something separate. Now it’s come around to where I feel that studying past climate change is extremely relevant to global environmental issues, but I didn’t see that connection when I started – it wasn’t so clear then.”

Nomination and article submitted by AWIS Chicago VP for Communications Michelle Merrigan.

*Know a scientist you think should be featured in an upcoming “Scientist of the Month” article?  Send nominations to Michelle Merrigan and Carrie Heusner.  Your nominee does not need to be an AWIS member or a woman, but should promote the advancement of women in science, technology, mathematics and engineering.

Want to keep yourself up-to-date on AWIS Chicago activities? Follow AWIS Chicago on Twitter! You can request to be added to our listserve by clicking here, and join the AWIS Chicago group on LinkedIn and Facebook by clicking the icons on the bottom right of this page.

November 2010 Scientist of the Month: Sacha Patera

By Eunji Chung

Sacha Patera is the Associate Director at the Office of Corporate Relations at Northwestern University. Dr. Patera connects corporate funding with scientific needs, focusing primarily on linking faculty members in the areas of physical and life sciences, technology, engineering and math to companies involved in pharmaceutical, biotechnology, technology and engineering efforts.

Born in Prague but a native of Canada, Sacha graduated from McGill University with a B.S. in Biochemistry and later received her Ph.D. in the Chemistry department at Brandeis University. It wasn’t a surprise that Sacha decided to pursue a doctoral degree; both her mother and father, grandmother and grandfather all received Ph.D.’s in various disciplines including physics, Russian literature, and math. In fact, the academic track was all she knew: her mother is a retired professor at McGill University and her father is a professor at the University of Montreal.

With her scholastic and educational pedigree, Sacha was aware that monetary and capital gains were not her motivational roots. Her current position at Northwestern speaks of her passion for linking the right connections and her understanding of the importance of intentional collaboration. Sacha understands that in many cases, the whole is greater than the sum of the individual parts. And so, between undergraduate and graduate schools, Sacha jumped at the chance to work with Payloads Systems (Cambridge, MA) on a protein crystallization experiment in space. At the time, NASA was still recovering from the Challenger accident and shuttle flight schedules were uncertain. Using the Russian space station MIR seemed the most viable option for this experiment. With Sacha’s biochemistry background and her fluency in Russian, she was the right link to come onboard. The project entailed collaboration with Greg Petsko’s crystallography group to grow crystals in space in an attempt to assess the effects of gravity on crystal growth. While the first mission in December 1989 was a success on many levels, subsequent missions had to be curtailed due to the fall of the USSR in 1991.

In 1989, Greg Petsko’s move to Brandeis University motivated Sacha to pursue a graduate degree there. Once at Brandeis, Sacha became unexpectedly intrigued with protein structure determination using NMR spectroscopy. Specifically, her thesis determined the structure of the active site loop of serpins (serine protease inhibitors) in the laboratory of Dr. Thomas Pochapsky. However, near the end of her graduate career, after attending a conference to find another investigator cracking the code to the same project, Sacha found herself somewhat deflated. As she was finishing her studies, Sacha met her husband and relocated to Chicago where she began post-doctoral work in crystallography with Dr. Alfonso Mondragon. When she started having children, Sacha was then faced with the issue of time management. Flexibility to be with her children became an imminent need, and after two years as a post-doc and four as a research associate in two different labs, Sacha realized that she was no longer happy doing bench work. It did not allow her to thrive the way she wanted to.

Though the decision to leave was very difficult, Sacha felt relief as well. On one hand, she felt she was disappointing her PI, her colleagues, parents, friends, and all professional women, and on another hand, she felt this was the beginning of the right path. Sacha stayed involved in science by teaching biochemistry and immunology courses at Northwestern’s School of Continuing Studies before becoming the Assistant Director of the Interdepartmental Biological Sciences Graduate Program (IBiS).

Before her decision to leave the lab, she says she hadn’t formulated what she wanted to do. It took soul searching and self-assessment for Sacha to honestly admit that her scientific talents were best served outside of the lab. That’s when she understood that she was an excellent go-between liaison between the “lay public and scientific community.” In many ways, her role in the IBiS program was just that. She reflects back on her time with IBiS as an incredibly rewarding experience as she facilitated discussion among students, faculty, and administration, participated in graduate education programming development and witnessed students coming into their own as they rose to their next step.

The time with IBiS was a period of tremendous growth for Sacha both personally and professionally. Her move to the Office of Corporate Relations was also motivated by the potential for growth and learning in a new area of University administration. While she can’t predict what her next move will be, she is excited about the professional opportunities that lie ahead.

Sacha considers herself lucky to have had mentors from all areas of the University who helped her appreciate her values, bring back self-confidence, and reaffirm her talents. She emphasizes that “all paths are valuable, not just academic paths,” and encourages everyone to seek out mentors who may or may not be your PI, and make the most of University career resources. Not all mentors have to come from the world of science.  For example, Yvette Davis, Business Administrator of the Life Sciences Financial Services at Northwestern, has also been very significant in Sacha’s professional development.

To the AWIS audience, Sacha advises to “be honest with yourself about what it is you want for yourself out of life, personally and professionally. Don’t do something because that’s what someone else thinks you should do. Ask yourself what do you want to do? When you have a terminal degree, you have to trust that there are many options out there for you, with the academic path being the only one that is well charted. It’s like what Dr. Alicia Löffler said at the AWIS dinner last year. Don’t be afraid to take a chance and jump from the comfort of this lily pad to the next one. And if the place that you land is not all that you thought it would be, learn what you can jump again. You will learn something with each jump and will be changed with each experience. But all of this happens only after you are honest with yourself – and optimistic.”

As a student in the IBIS program, I had the opportunity and privilege to be recruited by Sacha and form a friendship with her throughout my graduate studies. Sacha was always cheerful, willing, and persevering—rewards that come from someone, like her words above, who is honest with herself and the world around her.

Eunji is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Dr. Guillermo Ameer’s lab at Northwestern Unviersity. Her thesis consists of fabricating various biodegradable grafts for orthopaedic applications.  After graduation, she will move on to her post doctoral fellowship with Dr. Ramille Shah at Northwestern University and hopes to be a professor committed to both research and teaching.

*Know a scientist you think should be featured in an upcoming “Scientist of the Month” article? Submit your nomination here. Your nominee does not need to be an AWIS member or a woman, but should promote the advancement of women in science, technology, mathematics and engineering.

Want to keep yourself up-to-date on AWIS Chicago activities? Follow AWIS Chicago on Twitter! You can request to be added to our listserve by clicking here, and join the AWIS Chicago group on LinkedIn and Facebook by clicking the icons on the bottom right of this page.

October 2010 Scientist of the Month: Jacklyn Naughton – An Advocate for Research

by Marina Viktoria Pazin

I recall the challenging curriculum and passionate teachers in my science courses at Niles North High School. The introduction to experimentation, the captivating demonstrations, and the triumph I felt with each successful examination all lead me to choose science as a career. I came to admire my honors biology teacher, Jacklyn Naughton, most of all. Though we had not always kept in touch following my graduation from Niles North, we reconnected when I serendipitously took advantage of an opportunity to judge a science fair she was overseeing. I have been judging science fairs and mentoring her pupils in her laboratory ever since. Now, it is an honor for me to feature Jacklyn as a “Scientist of the Month.”

Jacklyn began to teach as a “happy accident.” She began to tutor as a premed student in the 1960s. The gratification she received from teaching and a desire to spend time with her child led her to defer acceptance into medical school and to go into teaching instead. Because she strongly believed in promoting science education among women, who at the time were not expected to be “more than a nurse,” Jacklyn first taught women only, emphasizing research over lectures. When she learned of a biology teaching position available at a co-ed and culturally-diverse Niles North High School in Skokie, she applied. In 1989, her belief in introducing independent research to students landed her the job over 200 candidates.

Jacklyn’s passion for research is reflected in the curriculum she has developed at Niles North over the past twenty years. As soon as she was hired she began to mandate independent research, for the first time in the district’s history, as a component of honors biology courses. Her first mission was accomplished within a year of teaching at Niles North. The following year she developed RIOT (Research and Investigators of Tomorrow) club, to promote STEM-related career development for students. As part of RIOT, students selected research questions and, using the scientific method, conducted experiments that answered these questions to competition. Leading by example, Jacklyn spent many summers conducting research herself, most recently in 2007 at ECCLES Institute for Human Genetics where she met Noble-Prize winning Mario Capecchi. The success of RIOT prompted Jacklyn’s desire to develop a course exclusively for teaching research skills. Jacklyn’s proposals to the board of education for this were initially rebuffed. “For twenty years I was pushing…research class was not a mainstream component of high school education.”

Recently, luck fell on Jacklyn’s side. With the public realizing the need for improved education in the STEM fields, school district 219 received a governmental grant to build STEM labs forming a space for the course Jacklyn had been envisioning. “I remember STEM labs opening at our school in September of 2009, with architects only starting to renovate our space in April of that year.” Finally, in the 2009-2010 school year, Mrs. Naughton unveiled her SIRs (‘STEM Inquiry and Research’) course. Through it, by completing a series of modules, students learn the proper way to develop and test hypotheses in a variety of disciplines, depending on their individual interests. Seeing the opportunity to work in professional labs as an asset, she encouraged students to do so, forming collaborations with prestigious universities Northwestern University, Loyola, and University of Chicago and pharmaceutical companies such as Abbott and Searle in the process.

In just one year the SIRs course has become a success. Its students competed at an International Science and Engineering Fair, with one winning five awards, including an all-paid research internship at Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. Many more won ‘best in category’ merits at the Illinois Junior Science Academy competition. The number of students interested in SIRs has more than doubled within a year.

Thanks to Jacklyn Naughton, the science experience at Niles North will never be the same.

Nomination and article submitted by AWIS Chicago Staff Writer Marina Pazin.

*Know a scientist you think should be featured in an upcoming “Scientist of the Month” article? Submit your nomination here. Your nominee does not need to be an AWIS member or a woman, but should promote the advancement of women in science, technology, mathematics and engineering.

Want to keep yourself up-to-date on AWIS Chicago activities? Follow AWIS Chicago on Twitter! You can request to be added to our listserve by clicking here, and join the AWIS Chicago group on LinkedIn and Facebook by clicking the icons on the bottom right of this page.

September 2010 Scientist of the Month: Jameela Jafri

by Heather King

Jameela Jafri has just spotted a red-tailed hawk, calls out to the group, and raises her arms in triumph over her head.  “There it is!”  she shouts, and we all look into the sky to see the majestic bird of prey ride the thermals above us.  The ‘we’ is myself, Jameela, two other educators, and nine high school girls from Chicago’s inner city.  We are in Yellowstone National Park for the week, participating in the All Girls’ Expedition, a yearly program run by Project Exploration (PE), a non-profit organization dedicated to science education and outreach in the Chicago area.

Jameela has coordinated girls’ programs at PE since 2007, but her interest in science and science education began much earlier.   Her father, a medical technologist, and her mother, a math teacher, came to New York from Karachi, Pakistan in the 1970s and brought with them their passion for the natural world.  They passed this knowledge and passion on to Jameela and her sisters by taking them on camping and fishing trips while the girls were growing up.

Jameela felt as a child that she was meant to be a part of science, but didn’t do well on tests and was weeded out of science honors classes in middle school.  She also struggled with her identity as a first-generation American and a woman of color.  “I really needed encouragement, and someone to believe in me,” Jameela said of her middle school days.  She got that encouragement while enrolled in high school at the Masters School in Dobbs Ferry, NY.  The most influential experiences Jameela had were outside of the classroom, and included school camping trips and birding expeditions.  These experiences with her high school teachers reinforced her passion and curiosity for the natural world and inspired her to share that passion through education.

In 1997, Jameela graduated with a Batchelor’s degree in Biology and a minor in Anthropology from Barnard College (Columbia University), and in 1999 with a Master’s degree in secondary science education from Teachers College (Columbia University).  She taught science at several high schools, including the Masters School, where she created curriculum that is still being used today.  “It was such a privilege to give back to a place that had given so much to me,” said Jameela of her time teaching at the Masters School.

After teaching science in the United States for several years, Jameela lived in Damascus, Syria for sixteen months to accomplish a life-long dream of learning Arabic.  While there, she met educators and informally spoke with them about how science is taught in Syria.

In 2007, she returned to the United States and moved to Chicago, where she began working for Project Exploration.  Project Exploration was founded in 2000 by University of Chicago paleontologist Paul Sereno and his wife, educator Gabrielle Lyon.  The mission statement of the organization is “to ensure that communities traditionally overlooked by science, such as minority youth and girls, have access to personalized experiences with scientists.”  PE acts as a bridge between local scientists and Chicago youth through after-school programs.  Scientists volunteer to design and execute lesson plans with the guidance of program coordinators like Jameela.  Since many PE programs are held weekly, the students involved become part of something larger, building lasting relationships with the program coordinators and scientists.

Perhaps because of her own experiences as a student, Jameela was very interested in how students’ after-school time complimented their time in the classroom, and understood the potential of afterschool programs like PE:  “The power of this format, with the scientists coming to give personalized lessons to the students after school, is that the lessons can be more hands-on and in-depth.  In addition, the lessons are informal, and once a scientist starts sharing about her personal challenges and triumphs, the students can see that this scientist is a real person, and that they could someday follow that same path.  The scientists can also learn about the students, and this turns the tables as if to say to the students ‘you’re just as interesting as I am.’”

Jameela began as the Girls’ Programs Coordinator and was promoted to Manager of Girls’ Programs after two years.  She and PE co-founder Gabrielle Lyon recently published an article about their work in the June 2010 issue of Afterschool Matters.

After three and a half years with PE, Jameela will be doing some scientific research of her own.  The seeds planted during her time in Syria have grown into a Fulbright fellowship to perform a case study on the teaching practices of a female science teacher in urban Damascus.  The study will address why science is important to Syrians culturally and socially, and what factors affect teaching practices in science.  “I’m interested in a cross-cultural understanding of how science is taught to youth, but I don’t think ultimately that we’re all that different.   I predict that many of the same factors that influence teaching and learning in the United States, such as race, gender, and economic status, will also influence teaching and learning in Syria,” says Jameela of her study.

I nominated Jameela for AWIS Scientist of the Month because she has been such a role model to me, and has inspired and encouraged me to become involved in my community and reach out to young women in the Chicago area.  Some of my first teaching experiences were through the PE programs, and she helped me expand my definition of a ‘scientist’ to see that there isn’t much separating me from a seventh-grade girl from the Chicago urban area; we both have a curiosity for the world around us, and we want to learn more about it.  We wish Jameela the best of luck during her time in Syria and beyond.

Learn more about Project Exploration.

To read the Jameela’s June 2010 article published in Afterschool Matters click here.

Nomination and article submitted by AWIS Chicago Staff Writer Heather King.  Ms. King is a PhD candidate at the University of Chicago.

*Know a scientist you think should be featured in an upcoming “Scientist of the Month” article?  Send nominations to Jessica Reimer.  Your nominee does not need to be an AWIS member or a woman, but should promote the advancement of women in science, technology, mathematics and engineering.

Want to keep yourself up-to-date on AWIS Chicago activities? Follow AWIS Chicago on Twitter! You can request to be added to our listserve by clicking here, and join the AWIS Chicago group on LinkedIn and Facebook by clicking the icons on the bottom right of this page.