Placement: Promote to Homepage

Julie Fox | Slice of MIT

October 21, 2020

Molecular biologist and professor emerita advocates for more inclusive science and advises how to get there.

Raleigh McElvery | Department of Biology

September 30, 2020

Over the course of her exceptional career, Amgen Professor of Biology Emerita Nancy Hopkins has overturned assumptions and defied expectations at the lab bench and beyond. After arriving at MIT in 1973, she set to work mapping RNA tumor virus genes, before switching her focus and pioneering zebrafish as a model system to probe vertebrate development and cancer.

Her experiences in male-dominated fields and institutions led her to catalyze an investigation that evolved into the groundbreaking 1999 public report on the status of women at MIT. These findings spurred nine universities, including MIT, to establish an ongoing effort to improve gender equity. A recent documentary, “Picture a Scientist,” chronicles this watershed report and spotlights researchers like Hopkins who champion underrepresented voices. She sat down to discuss what has changed for women in academia in the last two decades — and what hasn’t.

Q: How has the situation for women in science evolved since the landmark 1999 report?

A: It’s hard today to remember just how radical the 1999 report was at the time. I read it now and think, ‘What was so radical about that?’

The report documented that women joined the faculty believing that only greater family responsibilities might impede their success relative to male colleagues. But, as they progressed through tenure, many were marginalized and undervalued. Data showed this resulted in women having fewer institutional resources and rewards for their research, and in their exclusion from important professional opportunities. When the study began, only 8% of the science faculty were women.

Former MIT Dean of Science Robert Birgeneau addressed inequities on a case-by-case basis, adjusting salaries, space, and resources. He recruited women aggressively, quickly increasing the number of women School of Science faculty by 50%.

When the report became public, the overwhelming public reaction made clear that it described problems that were epidemic among women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Former MIT President Chuck Vest and Provost Bob Brown addressed gender bias for all of MIT and “institutionalized” solutions. They established committees in the five MIT schools to ensure that inequities were promptly addressed and hiring policies were fair; rewrote family leave policies with input from women faculty; built day care facilities on campus; and recruited women faculty to high-level administrative positions.

Today, we realize that the MIT report elucidated two underappreciated forms of bias: “institutional bias” resulting from a system designed for a man with a wife at home; and “unconscious or implicit gender bias.” Voluminous research by psychologists has documented the latter, showing that identical work is undervalued if people believe it was done by a woman. Refusal to acknowledge unconscious gender bias today is akin to denying the world is round.

Q: What do you hope people will take away from the “Picture a Scientist” film?

A: I hope people will better understand why women are underrepresented in science, and women of color particularly so. The film does a terrific job of portraying the range of destructive behaviors that collectively explain the question, “Why so few?” The movie also focuses on the courage it takes for young women scientists to expose these problems.

I hope people will agree that, despite all the progress for women in my generation, as the bombshell report from the National Academy of Sciences documented in 2018, sexual harassment and gender discrimination persist and still require constant attention. It remains a challenge to identify, attract, and retain the best STEM talent. And, as the movie points out, it’s critical to do so.

The producers have received an unprecedented number of requests to show the documentary in institutes, universities, and companies, confirming that underrepresentation remains a widespread and pressing issue.

Q: Where do we go from here? How can academia better support underrepresented groups in science moving forward?

A: People often say you have to “change the culture,” but what does that really mean? You have to do what MIT did: look at the data; make corrections, including policy changes if necessary; continue to track the data to see if the policies work; and repeat as needed. Second, as the National Academies report points out, you must reward administrators who create a diverse workplace. Top talent is distributed among diverse groups. You can only be the best by being diverse.

But how do you change the behavior of individual faculty? Years ago, President Vest told me, “Nancy, anything I can measure I can fix, but I don’t know how to fix marginalization.” His comment was prescient. We’re pretty good at fixing things we can measure. But not at retraining our own unconscious biases: preference for working with people who look just like us; and unexamined, biased assumptions about people different from us. But psychologists tell us all we have to do is ‘change the world and our biases will change along with it.’  Furthermore, they now have methods to measure change in our biases.

I championed this cause because I believe being a scientist is the greatest job there is. I want anyone with this passion to be able to be a scientist. I’m grateful I got to see change first hand. I just wish the change was faster, so young women like Jane Willenbring and Raychelle Burks in the movie can just be scientists.

Prize recognizes contributions to biomedical research made by immigrant scientists.

Raleigh McElvery | Sandi Miller | Department of Biology | Department of Physics

September 25, 2020

Associate professor of physics and biology Ibrahim Cissé, professor of biology and Whitehead Institute Director Ruth Lehmann, and Andria and Paul Heafy Whitehead Fellow Silvi Rouskin have been awarded 2021 Vilcek Prizes. The Vilcek Foundation was established in 2000 by Jan and Marica Vilcek, who emigrated from the former Czechoslovakia. Their prizes honor the outstanding contributions of immigrants in the sciences and the arts. Prizewinners will be honored in an April ceremony.

“The 2021 awards celebrate the diversity of immigrant contributions to biomedical research, to filmmaking, and to society,” Vilcek Foundation President Rick Kinsel said in a press release. “In recognizing foreign-born scientists and dynamic leaders in the arts and in public service, we seek to expand the public dialogue about the intellectual value and artistic diversity that immigration provides the United States.”

Ibrahim Cissé

A faculty member in the departments of Physics and Biology, Ibrahim Cissé received the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science for using super-resolution biological imaging to directly visualize the dynamic nature of gene expression in living cells.

Born in Niger, Cissé assumed he would be a lawyer like his father, but he soon became inspired by the science he saw in American films. His high school did not have a laboratory, so he completed high school two years early, enrolled in an English as a Second Language program at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, and enrolled in Durham Technical Community College before transferring to North Carolina Central University, a historically Black college that was notable for its undergraduate science and mathematics research programs.

Following graduation, he spent a summer at Princeton University working in condensed matter physics. There, Cissé was confronted by physics professor Paul Chaikin with a question about elliptical geometry and particle density, using M&M’s candies. Cissé’s creative problem-solving enabled him and his fellow researchers to develop experiments for observing and quantifying their results, and they coauthored a paper that was published in Science magazine.

For graduate studies, he was at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and earned a PhD under the supervision of single-molecule biophysicist Taekjip Ha, who was leading research in high-resolution, single-biomolecule imaging technology. Cissé’s interest in using physics to understand the physical processes in biology led him to a post-doctoral fellowship at École Normale Supérieure Paris. He showed that RNA polymerase II, a critical protein in gene expression, forms fleeting (“transient”) clusters with similar molecules in order to transcribe DNA into RNA. He joined the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Research Campus as a research specialist in the Transcription Imaging Consortium, before joining the MIT Department of Physics in 2014, and was recently granted tenure and a joint appointment in biology.

The Cissé Laboratory focuses on the development of high-resolution microscopy techniques to examine the behavior of single biomolecules in living cells, and his own research focuses on the process by which DNA gets decoded into RNA. His Time-Correlated Photoactivated Localization Microscopy (tcPALM) technique of imaging was able to peer inside living cells to study the dynamics of protein clusters. This discovery has led to breakthroughs in viewing the clustering and droplet-like behavior of RNA polymerase II during RNA transcription. In an interview with MIT News, he stated, “It’s becoming clearer that physics may be just as important as biology for understanding how cells work.”

Other national and international awards include the Young Fluorescence Investigator Award from the American Biophysical Society, the Pew Biomedical Scholars, and the National Institute of Health Director’s New Innovator Award. He is a Next Einstein Forum fellow and was listed in Science News’ Scientists to Watch.

Ruth Lehmann

Professor of biology and director of Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research Ruth Lehmann received the Vilcek Prize in Biomedical Science. As a developmental and cell biologist, she investigates the biology of germ cells, which give rise to sperm and eggs.

The daughter of a teacher and an engineer, Lehmann was captivated by science from a young age. She grew up in Cologne, Germany, and majored in biology as an undergraduate at the University of Tübingen. Her Fulbright Fellowship in 1977 brought her to the University of Washington in Seattle, and served as the catalyst that spurred her career using fruit flies to understand germ cell biology. She went on to train with renowned fruit fly geneticists Gerold Schubiger and Jose Campos-Ortega, learning classical developmental biology and electron microscopy techniques. She then performed her doctoral research with future Nobel laureate Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Genetics. There, Lehmann probed the maternal genes that influence fruit fly embryo development — studies that ignited her fervor for germ cell research. Later, as a postdoc at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England, she worked with Michael Wilcox and Peter Lawrence to pinpoint the molecules that control the fate of these vital cells.

Lehmann arrived at MIT in 1988, where she served as a professor and member of the Whitehead Institute for eight years. “Being an immigrant in the United States was exhilarating,” she says, “because of the openness to new ideas and the encouragement to take risks and be creative.”

She was recruited to the Skirball Institute at New York University (NYU), where she was appointed as the institute’s director, as well as the director of the Helen and Martin Kimmel Center for Stem Cell Biology, and chair of the Department of Cell Biology at NYU’s Langone Medical Center.

Lehmann returned to MIT this summer to launch the Lehmann Lab and become director of the Whitehead Institute in July.

Although she began her career focused on the formation and maintenance of germ cells, Lehmann has since revealed key insights into their migration — and more recently into mitochondrial inheritance. Her influential work regarding the development and behavior of these essential cells has also enriched related fields including stem cell biology, lipid biology, and DNA repair.

“It means so much to me to be recognized as an immigrant and a researcher,” says Lehmann. “In these days, immigrants don’t feel as welcomed as I did when I came to this country. For me, coming to the U.S. meant to be given a chance to live the dream of being a scientist. This allowed me to explore the fascinating biology of the germ line together with a group of incredibly talented trainees and staff, many of them immigrants themselves, and I share this wonderful recognition with them.”

Lehmann’s accolades include membership to the National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and European Molecular Biology Organization, as well as the Conklin Medal from the Society for Developmental Biology, the Porter Award from the American Society for Cell Biology, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the German Society for Developmental Biology.

Silvi Rouskin

The Andria and Paul Heafy Whitehead Fellow at the Whitehead Institute, Silvi Rouskin received the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science for developing methods to unravel the shapes of RNA molecules inside cells — aiding the potential development of RNA-based therapeutics.

The daughter of rock musicians in early-1980s communist Bulgaria, she grew up fascinated with the geometry of the flora and fauna around her. At 10, she started saving her lunch money to buy a miniature telescope. At 15 she knew that her best chances to study science would be in the United States, and so she joined a student exchange program in Idaho.

“I was not only allowed but encouraged to question my superiors,” she recalls. “I felt free to speak my mind, and often debated with my teachers.” Rouskin completed her GED and studied physics and biochemistry at the Florida Institute of Technology at 16.

As a staff research associate in the laboratory of Joseph DeRisi at the University of California at San Francisco, Rouskin first began studying RNA, using microarrays to detect and track viral infection. She opted to stay at UCSF to pursue her PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology.

She joined the Whitehead Institute in 2015, and established the Rouskin Lab to focus on the structure of RNA molecules, including viruses, and to determine how structure influences RNA processing and gene expression in HIV-1 and other viruses. Most recently, Rouskin uncovered the higher-order structure of the RNA genome of SARS-CoV2 — the virus that causes Covid-19  — in infected cells at high resolution.

“The goal of my own lab has been to perform basic RNA research with clear therapeutic applications and a particular focus on the vulnerabilities of RNA viruses,” says Rouskin. “I want my research to matter for medicine, and so I always approach my research with a cognizance of how my work can directly benefit people.”

Rouskin has also received the Harold M. Weintraub Graduate Student Award for outstanding achievements in biological sciences and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award at the Scientific Interface.