Engineering Diversity

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ENGINEERING DIVERSITY

 

Black/African American and Latinx prime-age adults are roughly a third (33 percent) of the adult population, but just 15 percent of engineers.  They continue to lag in terms of admissions to engineering programs, completion of degrees, occupational penetration, and tenure in engineering jobs.

Women are also underrepresented and underpaid in engineering. Women represent a little less than half of the employed prime-age population, but they only represent 16 percent of engineers. Women’s representation in engineering occupations has been improving, but barely.

 

 

Black/African American and Latinx engineers have lower levels of educational attainment than other engineers, but even when they have equal education, they are paid less.

 

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African Americans make up 2.1% of tenured/tenure-track faculty in biomedical engineering (2018).

The American Society for Engineering Education

8% of university presidents are Black/African American.

— 2016 American Council on Education

The ‘Enormous’ Promise of Focused Ultrasound Now Coming True
Elisa Konofagou | October 11, 2024

The ‘Enormous’ Promise of Focused Ultrasound Now Coming True
Elisa Konofagou | October 11, 2024

After several years of investigating focused ultrasound as a tool in treating Alzheimer’s, the field took a big leap forward this year.

Elisa Konofagou, PhD, a biomedical engineer who runs the Ultrasound and Elasticity Imaging Laboratory at Columbia University in the City of New York, published the results of her team’s groundbreaking research in July, demonstrating their noninvasive, fully portable system for delivering drugs and immunotherapy to patients with Alzheimer’s disease.

This after West Virginia University researchers established earlier this year how focused ultrasound can be used to sneak medication past the blood-brain barrier, reducing amyloid beta plaques.

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Hypoglycemia Controlled by Glucose Responsive Glucagon-Loaded Micelles
Heather Maynard | October 2, 2024

Hypoglycemia Controlled by Glucose Responsive Glucagon-Loaded Micelles
Heather Maynard | October 2, 2024

People with diabetes take insulin to lower high blood sugar. However, if glucose levels plunge too low—from taking too much insulin or not eating enough sugar—people can experience hypoglycemia, which can lead to dizziness, cognitive impairment, seizures or comas. Emergency treatment with the hormone glucagon (GCG) may be needed. Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) have now developed a method to encapsulate glucagon in glucose-responsive micelles that only release the hormone when blood glucose levels become too low. Tests in mice confirmed that the injected nanocapsules activated only when blood sugar levels dropped dangerously low, and quickly restored glucose levels.

Research leads Andrea Hevener, PhD, Heather Maynard, PhD, and colleagues reported on their developments in ACS Central Science, in a paper titled “A Glucose-Responsive Glucagon-Micelle for the Prevention of Hypoglycemia.

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Barbara Shinn-Cunningham Named Mellon College of Science Dean
Barbara Shinn-Cunningham | September 30, 2024

Barbara Shinn-Cunningham Named Mellon College of Science Dean
Barbara Shinn-Cunningham | September 30, 2024

Barbara Shinn-Cunningham has been named Carnegie Mellon University’s Glen de Vries Dean of the Mellon College of Science (MCS), effective Jan. 1, 2025.

Shinn-Cunningham, who will be the eighth dean to lead MCS, joined Carnegie Mellon in 2018 as the founding director of the Neuroscience Institute and the George A. and Helen Dunham Cowan Professor of Auditory Neuroscience. She holds courtesy appointments in the departments of Psychology, Biomedical Engineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering.

“Dr. Shinn-Cunningham’s appointment as the next dean of MCS marks an exciting next chapter for the college,” said Carnegie Mellon Provost James H. Garrett Jr. “Her distinguished research background and proven leadership skills position her to propel the future of science initiative forward and guide MCS toward even greater heights.

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Researchers find facemask impacts are leading source of higher severity impacts in professional American football
Kristy Arbogast | September 11, 2024

Researchers find facemask impacts are leading source of higher severity impacts in professional American football
Kristy Arbogast | September 11, 2024

Nearly one third of concussions in professional American football are due to impacts from the facemask, a part of the helmet that has remained mostly unchanged in the last decade. In a new study presented at the International Research Council on Biomechanics of Injury conference today, researchers used data collected from instrumented mouthpieces worn by players in the National Football League (NFL) that measured head motion and found that facemasks are the most frequent location of impact on a player’s helmet in a subset of high severity impacts. The study findings suggest that facemask enhancements could help protect players and minimize injury risk.

In recent years, there has been a concerted effort to reduce the number of concussions sustained by professional American football players, with one important strategy involving engineering research to redesign helmets to better protect these athletes.

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Tiny killers: How autoantibodies attack the heart in lupus patients
Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic | August 20, 2024

Tiny killers: How autoantibodies attack the heart in lupus patients
Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic | August 20, 2024

Columbia team engineers a model of the human heart tissue that demonstrates how autoantibodies directly affect heart disease in lupus patients

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in patients suffering from lupus, an autoimmune disease in which our immune system attacks our own tissues and organs, the heart, blood, lung, joints, brain, and skin. Lupus myocarditis–inflammation of the heart muscle– can be very serious because the inflammation alters the regularity of the rhythm and strength of the heartbeat. However, the mechanisms underlying this complex disease are poorly understood and difficult to study.

A long-standing question about lupus is why some patients develop myocarditis while others remain unaffected. And why the clinical manifestations of affected patients range so dramatically, from no symptoms at all to severe heart failure. Lupus is characterized by a large number of autoantibodies, immune proteins that mistakenly target a person’s own tissues or organs, with different specificities for various molecules. Like our genes, they may explain why different individuals experience different symptoms.

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Advancing Antiracism, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in STEMM Organizations
National Academies

Advancing Antiracism, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in STEMM Organizations
National Academies

People from minoritized racial and ethnic groups continue to face numerous systemic barriers that impede their ability to access, persist, and thrive in STEMM higher education and the workforce.

To promote a culture of antiracism, diversity, equity, and inclusion (ADEI) in STEMM, organizations must actively work to dismantle policies and practices that disadvantage people from minoritized groups.

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What Can We Do to Combat Anti-Black Racism in the Biomedical Research Enterprise?
NIH

What Can We Do to Combat Anti-Black Racism in the Biomedical Research Enterprise?
NIH

The recent deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor, in addition to the disproportionate burden of COVID-19 on African Americans, are wrenching reminders of the many harms that societal racism, inequality, and injustice inflict on the Black community. These injustices are rooted in centuries of oppression—including slavery and Jim Crow, redlining, school segregation, and mass incarceration—that continue to influence American life, including the biomedical research enterprise. Despite leading an NIH Institute whose mission includes building a diverse scientific workforce, at NIGMS we’ve struggled with what an adequate response to this moment would be, knowing that the systems that mediate the distinct and disparate burdens Black students, postdocs, and scientists face are complex and often aren’t easily moved with the urgency that they demand. With that in mind, below we share thoughts on what each of us who is in the majority or in a position of power can do to help break the cycles of racial disparities that are woven into the fabric of the biomedical research enterprise and that limit opportunities Link to external web site for Black scientists Link to external web site.

Institutional structures, policies, and cultures Link to external web site, including those in the biomedical research enterprise, all contribute to racial inequality and injustice. This fact was laid bare for us by the responses to the request for information (RFI) we issued in 2018 on strategies to enhance successful postdoctoral career transitions to promote faculty diversity. Respondents cited bias and discrimination—including racism—most frequently as a key barrier to postdoctoral researchers attaining independent faculty positions.

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Combating sexual harassment
Science

Combating sexual harassment
Science

Sexual harassment, including gender harassment, presents an unacceptable barrier that prevents women from achieving their rightful place in science, and robs society and the scientific enterprise of diverse and critical talent. As the largest single funder of biomedical research in the world, the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) bears a responsibility to take action to put an end to this behavior. In 2019, the NIH began to bolster its policies and practices to address and prevent sexual harassment. This included new communication channels to inform the agency of instances of sexual harassment related to NIH-funded research. This week, the NIH announces a change that will hold grantee institutions and investigators accountable for this misconduct, to further foster a culture whereby sexual harassment and other inappropriate behaviors are not tolerated in the research and training environment.

Last year, an Advisory Committee to the Director (ACD) of the NIH presented a report and recommendations to end sexual harassment. A major theme of this report was the need for increased transparency and accountability in the reporting of professional misconduct, especially sexual harassment. The cases of sexual harassment that surfaced in the wake of the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) 2018 report highlighted a substantial gap in the NIH’s oversight of the research enterprise: There was no straightforward mechanism for the agency to learn of sexual harassment or other misconduct taking place at grantee institutions in the context of NIH-funded research. It was not uncommon for the NIH to discover such cases through the media, amid rightful public outcry. Holding institutions and investigators accountable for this behavior was challenging.

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White Academia: Do Better.
Medium

White Academia: Do Better.
Medium

Over the past couple of weeks, our nation has been confronted with ugly truths and hard history revealing how systemic racism rears its head in almost every space. Since the COVID-19 pandemic has slowed down our typical lifestyles, people seem to be listening.

This moment feels very different from other situations when we had to address human rights in the context of race relations in the United States. With that comes a host of emotions that White people have rarely had to deal with because of their racial privilege, and this includes White people working in academia.

Like many Black faculty, and Black people in general, I have received messages and texts from White colleagues apologizing, expressing their guilt and remorse, and asking what they can do to support their Black colleagues and friends.

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Guidelines for Diversity & Inclusion in Crisis
Juan E. Gilbert, PhD

Guidelines for Diversity & Inclusion in Crisis
Juan E. Gilbert, PhD

I am writing these guidelines in response to the recent events that have impacted the Black community, specifically, the Black computing community. As the Department Chair of the Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE) Department at the University of Florida, I lead, one of, if not, the nation’s most diverse computing sciences (CS) department. We have the nation’s most Black CS faculty and PhD students. We are one of the top CS departments for the number of female faculty. As a researcher, I have had the honor of producing the nation’s most Black/African-American CS PhDs. I have also had the honor of hiring and promoting the most Black faculty in CS. My experiences span more than 20 years and those experiences are the foundation for these guidelines.

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