Kudos to past WISE exec and officer for defending their PhD theses!

I just wanted to recognize the awesomeness of one of the original four founding members of CU-WISE and past Executive Natalia Villanueva-Rosales, and past CU-WISE Officer Terri Oda, both of whom successfully passed their PhD thesis defences in the last few weeks.  Both of their committees were rather impressed with them.  Congrats ladies!!

I don't think we celebrate our own accomplishments enough, so I'm always trying to encourage others to do so here on the blog.  If you're a member of the CU-WISE community and have something to share about yourself or another awesome woman in science or engineering here at Carleton, you can always contact CU-WISE (wise@carleton.ca) and have us post it!

How CEOs' daughters are helping close the wage gap

I found this quite interesting:

A new, not-yet-published study that tracked 12 years of wage data in Denmark finds that when male CEOs had daughters, their female employees' wages went up 1.3 percent while their male employees only gained .8 percent raises. So the birth of a daughter effectively shrunk the male-female wage gap by .5 percent on average.

If the daughter was a first child, the gap closed by a whopping 2.8%!

The rest of the article: After CEOs have daughters, women employees’ wages go up

Can you accomplish more with a female instructor?

IBM Extreme Blue Case Study Competition-4264
by Terriko.

I don't get what the bit about Obama and Desperate Housewives at the start of this article from Slate entitled "Pscyh-out sexism" is trying to say, but the research summarized later sounds interesting. Here's a quote about the first study:

The psychologists asked female students studying biology, chemistry, and engineering to take a very tough math test. All the students were greeted by a senior math major who wore a T-shirt displaying Einstein's E=mc² equation. For some volunteers, the math major was male. For others, the math major was female. This tiny tweak made a difference: Women attempted more questions on the tough math test when they were greeted by a female math major rather than a male math major. On psychological tests that measured their unconscious attitudes toward math, the female students showed a stronger self-identification with math when the math major who had greeted them was female. When they were greeted by the male math major, women had significantly higher negative attitudes toward math.

In the next study, they found that university-level women asked fewer questions in class and in office hours after a term with a male prof than they did after a term with a female one. And in the final study, they found that women had more confidence with a female teacher... even if tests showed that they were outperforming their male colleagues.

The latter two studies could be for reasons other than the gender of the teacher: previous studies have shown that although fewer women reach the level of prof, those who do tend to be exceptional so it might be their innate talents and not as much their gender that allows them to reach their students better. But still, it's an interesting selection of research, and really speaks to why it's so valuable for the women of WISE to teach others!

So next time you wonder if it's worth coming out to an outreach event, remember that your smiling face may be just what another young woman needs to get her to try that little bit harder!

The advantage of being me

From The Advantage Of Dual-Identities (A Case Study of Nabokov), I bring you this quote:

It’s also important to note that the advantage of having a “dual-identity” – being both a novelist and a scientist, for instance – isn’t limited to Nabokov. According to a study led by Jeffrey Sanchez-Burks, a psychologist at the University of Michigan, people who describe themselves as both Asian and American, or see themselves as a female engineer (and not just an engineer), consistently display higher levels of creativity.

So as a female, half-asian all-canadian researcher, I'm clearly better at creativity than all those boring white dude researchers?

... I don't even know exactly where to begin on this. So I'm going talk about Bones for a minute. I've been watching it with my sister lately while we do other things (crochet, do mending, wander around looking for things in an mmo, eat dinner, etc.) and the other day she pointed out that she loves how the show deals with Angela, or really, how it doesn't. See, Angela Montenegro is the team's artist: she does sketches of the victims. But she doesn't stop there: she also coaxes data off broken camcorders and swallowed flash drives doing digital forensic work. She's an adept computer programmer who writes software that helps visualize and model what happened during a crime. What's cool about Bones is that it's totally taken for granted that she can be an artist and a coder. (And really, pretty much whatever else she wants to be.)

So I guess while I fundamentally agree that having multiple "identities" is a huge asset to my work and creative abilities, I sort of feel like... why are they making such a big deal about this, as if it's some hugely abnormal thing. Why can't they just accept that Angela can draw and code? Why do people insist on compartmentalizing people into single skill sets? I can drive a car and code and no one thinks that's weird, but plenty of people have commented with surprise that I can edit a magazine (yes, I used to do this) and write code. Hello, world?

The article just makes me a little uncomfortable. This worst part is the paragraph about how the US will be overrun by mixed-race folk like me with superior creative skills -- awkward racial superiority with a different spin -- but even the study methodology doesn't quite sit right with me at a first reading. But maybe the article is simply a journalistic reflection of research into of a real logical fallacy that people often employ: the assumption that one must specialize in only one skill to be the best person one can be. That's one of those things that might be true for programs, but I really haven't seen much evidence of it being true for people.

Despite my issues with the article, I think it's got a nice take-away message: it's a-ok, normal, and maybe even superior to have and use your multiple identities. And don't let incredulous folk tell you otherwise.

This was originally posted on my personal blog.

Video Games as a Stealth Learning Tool

My PhD research is all about using augmented reality in games designed to teach you something.  I think educational games has had a bit of a bad rap for a while, and maybe this is for good reason.  There so seem to be memories among many students of basic skill and drill activities thinly disguised as games.

But game designers are getting better at making their players smarter.  For example, there's been a lot of cool research happening in the area, and we seem to know a lot more about how to create a compelling experience that teaches you something at the same time.  (Take a look at this article I wrote on my own blog about educational games.)

Even better, more and more research is coming out that games is actually a really effective way to learn. There's a recent article in Psych Central News that says this:

To kids, such games would remain a pleasant diversion. But to Mom and Dad, they would provide reassurance that their child is acquiring the knowledge and skills needed to excel in an increasingly competitive world.  “The concept is known as ‘stealth assessment,’” said Shute, a professor of instructional systems. “Essentially what we try to do is disguise educational content in such a way that kids aren’t even aware that they’re being assessed while they’re engrossed in game play.”

I say it's never been a better time to be in this field, and if you're in computer science or anything related, then maybe it's the right time for you to join us and study educational games in graduate school. ;)

Finally, a reason to watch game shows

Computer scientists have a reason to cheer tonight for Watson, IBM's artificial intelligence that is attempting to beat two of Jeopardy’s human champions and expand the frontiers of artificial intelligence. Last night's broadcast ended with Watson at $35,734, Brad Rutter at $10,400, and Ken Jennings at $4,800 after a fascinating game (in which Watson strangely thought Toronto was a U.S. city.)

I've been closely following Watson's progress because of the implications "he" has for computer science. I like the idea of "grand challenges," as IBM calls their ambitious projects - not only for the innovation they produce, but also because of their power to engage the public and promote interest in computer science. For those interested in learning more, IBM.com/watson has many interesting videos on the project. The videos cover the actual tech behind the system (dubbed "DeepQA" by IBM), and its implications for data management and analytics in various industries. The human element is given special attention, too - my favourite segments are the ones profiling the various teams of IBM researchers from different disciplines, and showing how each of them contributed to this ambitious project.

The videos are entertaining, fascinating - sometimes even amusing. In one of the video commentaries, one of the developers said his favorite misparse of a question was when the clue was:

"Category: Bottoms Up!:
It's made with equal amounts of champagne and orange juice."
and Watson said "What is breakfast?"

Ottawa IBM employees and Carleton students (including yours truly) will celebrate tonight with a party and screening of the final game at Oliver’s Pub. For A.I. enthusiasts, it's perhaps a more exciting broadcast than the Superbowl!

Chemistry Professor Maria DeRosa Honoured for Research

From the Carleton University newsroom:

For the millions of people worldwide who suffer from psychiatric and neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s disease and schizophrenia, Carleton Professor Maria DeRosa’s next research initiative provides hope for a new treatment. DeRosa is one of 10 Carleton professors who will be honoured with a Research Achievement Award from the university for her innovative research that helps find solutions to real-world problems. The other winners will be announced throughout Carleton’s Research Days celebration that runs until Feb. 11.

Read the rest here and join us in celebrating the amazing accomplishments of all Carleton women in science and engineering!

Water Watch

CU-WISE Outreach Officer Natalie Linklater and faculty advisor Banu Örmeci were recently featured in Carleton University's Research Works:

Banu Örmeci is the Canada Research Chair in Wastewater and Public Health Engineering. Together with grad student Natalie Linklater, she’s developing an innovative new monitoring system for water supplies that uses real-time methods to assess change in quality, and achieve rapid screening of water for toxic substances and pathogens.

 Way to go ladies! Keep up the great work.

Meritocracy? Might want to re-think how you define merit.

This has been cross-posted from Geek Feminism, but I found this research really fascinating so you're getting a full copy here too.


You might think if you put together a lot of smart people, you'd get a smart group, but new research into group intelligence shows that's not always the case. (For those of you who don't have access to online journal subscriptions through your local library or university, there are more details in the Carnegie Mellon University press release.)

What we found is that the intelligence of the team members was not significantly related to the collective intelligence, either positively or negatively.

[...]

Our first observation and the one that surprised us the most was that the proportion of females in the group seemed to be strongly predictive of the collective intelligence of the group.

However, when they looked more closely they realised that it wasn't the gender that mattered, but rather the social sensitivity of the group members (previous studies had shown that women tend to score more highly in social sensitivity).

It's not the intelligence of the group members that matters; it's their social sensitivity.

So the more your group members were socially sensitive, the better the group performed in measures of collective intelligence. The key here was that group members need to collaborate, and to do that they needed those social skills to help them work together. This includes some different conversational patterns: groups where one or two people dominated conversations exhibited low collective intelligence, while groups where more people contributed had higher collective intelligence.

This scientific research is potentially a big blow to the standard "meritocracy works" theory often espoused in open source and computing groups. Standard meritocracy rules say you do clever things and you get accepted, and this will make for perfectly good teams. But given that there's often bias that dismisses "soft skills," it turns out that folk may actually be using typical geek meritocracy rules to weed out some of the people we need to make the group most effective as a whole.

Some of my female colleagues would like to conclude that you simply just need to hire more women. While that might be easier, what it really suggests is that you need to pay attention to what people refer to as these "softer skills" and thinking about who's going to be a good team player, not necessarily focused solely on individual achievement, individual accomplishments.

So if you want to claim that the best way to build tech teams is meritocracy... you might want to think more carefully about how you define merit.

The quotes in this article are drawn from Bob McDonald's conversation with Dr. Anita Williams Woolley, the lead author, on the Quirks and Quarks interview aired October 9. You can download the podcast of the segment on collective intelligence here.

Celebration a Success!

Wow. Our Carleton Celebration of Women in Science and Engineering last week was AMAZING. I ended up writing it up on my own blog before I had the chance to write here:

My main goals were to showcase what the Carleton ladies in science and engineering have been up to, and to give us an opportunity for us to network, since WISE spans so many technical and scientific disciplines. I think we succeeded on both counts!

Read the rest here!

Celebration of Women in Science and Engineering is TOMORROW!

I can't believe the Carleton Celebration of Women in Science and Engineering is finally here. Less than 20 hours from now, I'll have arrived on campus to set up and get ready for the welcome note!

I'm really proud of what we've accomplished with this event. In only about a month, we put out a call for proposals, got more amazing abstracts than we could schedule in our original time frame, somehow put together a schedule that worked, booked a wonderful meal for speakers and their guests after the event, and got the word out to the Carleton and Ottawa communities. Just this morning I came back from recording an interview with Terri about the event to be played on CBC tomorrow morning!

If you are anywhere near the Carleton campus, it would be well worth your time to take a few minutes and listen to a few of our speakers. Pick a topic you're interested in and see what cool research is being done. Come to the professional development talks later in the day. Have your say at the round table discussion happening in the evening.

A full schedule of the talks and their abstracts are available on our website.

I sincerely hope to see you there!

An inspirational book written by our very own

Dr. Monique Frize is an engineering professor at Carleton and Ottawa University who revived Ottawa WISE in 1997. After 8 years of researching, writing, and editing, she finally published her book titled "The Bold and the Brave: a history of women in science and engineering". I attended her book launch on Dec. 1st, got her autograph, and started reading the next day.

I've been waiting to get my hands on this book ever since I first met Dr. Frize at McMaster University's WISE initiative conference in 2008 where she was a speaker. To tell you the truth I was quite enthralled by all that she knew and had experienced. I remember she talked about things that happened so far back in time that I realized just how big of a deal her book was and I wanted to know more.

I haven't read very far yet so you'll have to wait for more posts from me later, but I wanted to leave you with a short interview my friend Jennifer Ng, the IEEE WIE Ottawa Chair, had with Dr Frize:

What was the most challenging part of the book to write? What was the easiest? The first two parts (philosophy and history) were the most difficult as I had to find all the material from sources that I had not seen before. The contemporary part was the easiest, having done 20 years of work on women in science and engineering through the two Chair positions I held (Northern telecom/NSERC women in engineering Chair at UNB, then the NSERC/Nortel Chair for women in science and engineering at UO and CU).

If you did not study engineering, what would have been your alternate choice? Medicine was my other choice.

If you restarted your engineering studies today, what specialties would catch your attention? The same: Electrical Engineering and then Biomedical Engineering

Is there an engineering domain today which one has to be brave & bold to tackle? I think most would require a woman with confidence, who believes in herself. But perhaps biomed and environmental are a little easier for women than say mining or construction, petroleum, etc.

Any particular advice for today's young female engineer? Believe in yourself! And find good mentors at each stage of a career. Jump over hurdles and you will reach your goals. Pick your battles carefully and sleep 24 hours prior to responding to conflict by letter or a meeting (except if an immediate response is needed).

Any particular advice for today's young male engineer? You need to see the value in feminine attributes and respect your female colleagues. Everyone has their talents and skills and it is important to value the contributions from people who are different from us. You can be part of the solution to build a balanced world of engineering and technology.

Anything else that you would like our IEEE Canada readers to know about your book?Everyone can find something in the book that they can do to move towards an engineering profession that is more balanced and that respects everyone's perspectives and contributions. The book will hopefully also help mothers, fathers, uncles and aunts to open up opportunities for the girls in their family to consider more career choices, including engineering!

People aren't very good at predicting what will make them happy

Cutting-edge research shows that people aren't very good at predicting what will make them happy. In my own experience, that explains a lot. So I'm hoping this article, titled "Psychologists now know what makes people happy", will help me understand it more. I recommend reading the whole article (which I found from more than one source, such as this one). But if you prefer a quick run through, here are snippets I found most interesting:

- The happiest people spend the least time alone. They pursue personal growth and intimacy; they judge themselves by their own yardsticks, never against what others do or have.

- A person's cheer level is about half genetic.

- Plenty of healthy people take their health for granted and are none the happier for it... Meanwhile, the sickly often bear up well, and hypochondriacs cling to misery despite their robust health.

- Life satisfaction occurs most often when people are engaged in absorbing activities that cause them to forget themselves, lose track of time and stop worrying.

- Everyone has "signature strengths"... and the happiest use them.

- Gratitude has a lot to do with life satisfaction, psychologists say. Talking and writing about what they're grateful for amplifies adults' happiness, new studies show. Other researchers have found that learning to savor even small pleasures has the same effect.

- Forgiveness is the trait most strongly linked to happiness.

- In pursuing happiness... we should have more trust in our own resilience and less confidence in our predictions about how we'll feel. We should be a bit more humble and a bit more brave.

Good luck in your journey to find real happiness!

Tips, Tricks and Software for Keeping Research Organized

As somebody who naturally loves to organize, this session was close to my heart. Oddly enough, I didn't really do a whole lot of organizing for my Masters research (I guess it was 'simple' enough that I didn't need to), but I'm really excited to use some of this advice as I start my PhD. One of the first things I'm going to (finally) do after thinking about it a lot is setting up an SVN server on my own webserver.

Read the rest on my blog.