Contributions solicited by the Education Team
The Education Team focus for October and November is Equal Access, which encompasses SDG Targets 4.2 & 4.5. Our October ‟Notes from the Field” focus on the ‟S” and ‟T” of STEM Education: Science and Technology – traditionally fields where girls and women have been discouraged from entering, thereby denying them equal access to a multitude of careers and opportunities. We hope you find this month’s notes inspirational and aspirational! 
(image courtesy of Unsplash)
Sarah, Features Editor for Physics World, UK:
When you ask a physicist “Why did you choose physics?”, I think most would give the same answer – a need to know how and why the physical world around us behaves like it does. That’s why I picked it. But that initial decision to study physics at university was probably the easiest in my career to date. Towards the end of my undergraduate studies, I had no idea what I wanted to do next. It wasn’t clear what you could do with a physics degree other than academia, teaching and engineering-related industry jobs. So after much debate, I settled on doing a PhD developing a new material for water filtration.
Something they don’t teach you beforehand, however, is that scientific research is not a smooth road: experiments go wrong a lot, hypotheses need to be revisited and sometimes you just have to scrap an entire thread of research. Already not the most confident about my abilities, I started to struggle with anxiety. In hindsight, I can see that there was an element of imposter syndrome, something I now know many women in physics experience at some stage. I always knew physics was a male-dominated subject, but had assumed that the other women in the field were just more intelligent than me and therefore didn’t feel this inadequacy. I wish I had known at the time that I was not alone in feeling like that.
In the end I realized I needed to ask for help, and that was key to me getting through the rest of my PhD. It also gave me a chance to discover what I actually enjoyed doing – science writing. In fact, I was one of those few people who preferred writing their thesis to doing the experiments, which made me sure that staying in research wasn’t for me. Now I’m the features editor for Physics World, an international physics magazine and website published by the UK’s Institute of Physics. As well as writing and editing articles about science, I get to learn about the exciting developments in the field, meet physicists from around the world in and out of research, and encourage diversity, inclusivity and equality in physics.
So if you’re pursuing a career in physics, my advice would be to find what you enjoy doing on a day-to-day level – there are so many ways to use your love of physics! And remember, it’s okay to ask for help.
Carolyn, Immunologist, UK:
I went to high school in England, where the educational system is such that at age 16 you drastically pare down your subjects to study only 3 to 4 for your junior and senior years. I enjoyed everything at that point, so it was a bit of a struggle to specialize, and I think my choice to study biology, chemistry, math and French was ultimately very guided by what best kept my options open. After finally deciding to do a biology degree, I still didn’t have a master plan of what I was intending to do with this – in large part because I had very little visibility at that point in terms of viable science career options. I had no intention of going into medicine – I’m very squeamish! – and that was the main push you received at my school once you decided to pursue biology and chemistry. I must have just had faith that a science degree would be both interesting and employable.
Based on the infinite wisdom of an American Girl personality quiz, I’d been known for years in my family as ‟Nature Girl,” and I started college thinking that I wanted to do something related to ecology/conservation. However, my interest was increasingly drawn elsewhere, mainly to the field of immunology. The dynamic between our immune systems and invading viruses, bacteria and parasites was fascinating to me, and in particular, how we can use knowledge of these interactions to develop life-saving interventions like vaccines. I knew that it would be important to me to have a career that was both intellectually engaging and meaningful, and so the possibility of applying the rigor of science to public health problems was therefore enormously appealing.
I went on to do a master’s degree in Molecular Microbiology and Immunology with a focus on vaccine science and policy, followed by a PhD where I studied the impact of underlying viral infections on immune responses to vaccines. I have now been working as an immunologist as part of a malaria vaccine team at the University of Oxford for over four years, collaborating with research groups in the UK, USA and Tanzania. If I take a step back, it continues to amaze me that I am literally paid to try and understand something I am interested in anyway! I’d highly recommend a STEM career to anyone with curiosity. And if in doubt, follow your interests – that’s where your self-motivation will be best.
Joyann, President – Sunflower Environmental Compliance Group, LLC, US:
My STEM career challenges can be summed up by a Dr. Suess quote: “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.” I spent the last eleven years working as an environmental compliance engineer for big industries. I have worked on some projects that help design millions of gallons a day in water savings and other projects that were a constant daily reminder that the managers were on the very gray line of compliance. In an overhead group working towards a greener safety industry, it is hard to overcome the cost-benefit role management must possess. Sometimes it felt like you were the sole survivor on an island of the belief that industry can be cleaner, and corporate responsibility is not just greenwashing. Then I remembered, the company hired me as an environmental compliance engineer. The company hired my passion, my zeal, my commitment to the environment; the company hired me to keep them in compliance, to obtain their environmental responsibility image. The most effective way I overcame my STEM challenges was simply to remind myself who I am and to care a “whole awful lot.”
