ISSUE NO. 6 | OCTOBER 2020
WiE - UC Newsletter IEEE Student Branch of the UC - Women in Engineering Affinity Group
ISSUE NO. 6 | OCTOBER 2020
IEEE WiE interviews Diana Prata Diana Prata received a degree in biology from the University of Lisbon and a Ph.D. degree in neuroimaging genetics from the King’s College London (KCL), in 2002 and 2008 respectively. She is the founder and group leader of the Biomedical Neuroscience research lab, now the Biomedical Neuroscience Lab at the Institute of Biophysics and Biomedical Engineering of the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon; and a Marie Curie Fellow. During her career, she won several distinctions and prizes, namely the Marie Curie Actions 3rd prize as the most promising scientist in “Innovation and Entrepreneurship” and a top Early Career Researcher in the UK Research Excellence Framework assessment distinction; and grants such as the prestigious NIHR (National Institute for Health Research, UK) post-doc fellowship and the Marie Curie Career Integration Grant. Her work focuses on the understanding of the biology behind human behavior, and its translation into improving etiological and therapeutic models of neuropsychiatric disorders.
SOURCE: LIFE.DN.PT/DIANA-PRATA-NEUROCIENCIA-OXITOCINA-EMPATIA-COMPORTAMENTO-SOCIAL/COMPORTAMENTO/346142
1. You started your career path in biology, however, your Ph.D. and current work focus on neuroscience. How did your interest in the mind/psyche and the associated disorders spark? Diana told us that when she finished high school and had to choose which degree to take, she felt truly divided because, as a curious mind, the choice between biology, psychology, and medicine was very difficult. She ended up enrolling in the biology course of the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon. During her degree, Diana always kept curious about other fields (namely, psychology and neuroscience), having complemented her academic training by reading books on these topics.
Her PhD in neuroimaging genetics allowed her to combine biology with the areas of psychiatry, psychology, neuroscience, medicine, and engineering in the fully interdisciplinary research Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience (King’s College, London), where she stayed for 12 years. Currently, she has her own research lab in Portugal since 2015 where she leads multidisciplinary team (made of biologists, physicians, psychologists, and biomedical engineers, and more) that allows interdisciplinary research aiming to understand the biological basis of some diseases and the biological behavior in general.
ISSUE NO. 6 | OCTOBER 2020
2. Scientifically speaking, are the men's and women's brains different? If yes, in what ways and how does this conditionate the behavior? Diana hesitated to answer this question, although her final answer was “yes”. Since all brains are different, obviously there is a difference between the brains of men and women. However, there are some characteristic patterns of each sex, i.e. on some psychological traits men and women are, on average, different. Diana gave us some examples:
1 - empathy: women have, on average, higher empathic traits than men which probably explain their preference for professions that involve empathic abilities (such as nursing, education, and so on); 2 - multitasking: although there is a common belief that women have an advantage over men doing multitasking, this difference is unclear scientifically (and Diana highlighted that for a neuroscientist there isn’t the concept of multitasking, what really happens in our brain is task shifting); 3 - spatial orientation: there is evidence that, on average, men are better than women, probably, like most differences, due to their specialization in behaviours, such as hunting, that lead to genetic differences being hard-wired across evolutionary time; 4 - fluency: in fact, there is scientific evidence that women have, on average, better verbal fluency capabilities, and communication skills, than men. All these examples of differences between women and men are partially due to the “hormonal cocktail” typical of each sex; as everyone knows, men have more testosterone and women have more estrogens (among other differences in hormones/ neurotransmitters and so on), which will of course influence the brain and the neurodevelopment of men and women. Therefore, once the behavior and the cognitive capabilities depend on neuronal systems and the “cocktail of hormones/ neurotransmitters/etc” acting on the brain, the different neuronal profiles between women and men are reflected on different behaviors/traits/ characteristics.
3. How difficult was it to set up your own lab? Academia was always your first choice? Diana explained to us that set up a research lab is as easy as it is difficult: the easy part for her was her good sense to “embrace ignorance” and admit (and even be glad) that she is not an expert on all fields of knowledge, humbly recognize “where” the expertise lacks, and then not hesitate to be curious and ask for help. Actually, Diana told us that this is the 1st rule for a scientist, especially an interdisciplinary one. Being the Biomedical Neuroscience Lab a multidisciplinary research lab, the difficult part was to implement the interdisciplinary vision that Diana had when she returned from the UK to Portugal since clinical-academic human multidisciplinary neuroscience labs are not so common in Portugal such as in the UK. Probably due to this, there are also a lot of bureaucratic and cultural issues that have also proved to be challenging. The final balance is, however, rewarding. Regarding the choice for academia, Diana told us that she always wanted to be a scientist. However, she highlights that this is a very complicated job because creativity and resilience are needed to overcome the obstacles and challenges that arise. 4. During your path, did you ever feel any kind of discrimination for being a woman? What challenges do women face in academia? Both during the beginning of her biology degree in Portugal such as during her PhD research time in the UK, Diana never felt discrimination. However, she also told us that this probably happened because she was too young to notice it in Portugal. After 14 years away, when she arrived in Portugal, she started noticinged this inequality between women and men more, mainly on the part of older men/ women who grew up and grew within a machoistic cultural paradigm. Diana told us that she also noticed the contrast between Portugal and the UK and that we still have a way to go. Regarding the challenges of women in academia, Diana highlights that gender inequality is precisely one of them, but that it is up to all of us to undo that way of thinking. 5. What is the ratio of female to male Professors in your faculty? As a group leader, do you get many female Ph.D. students knocking on your door?
ISSUE NO. 6 | OCTOBER 2020
Is there more that universities could do to get more female students engaged in pursuing higher academic degrees? Although Diana doesn't know the ratio of women and men students in the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon, she considers that it is perfectly normal that some courses have more boys than girls (and the opposite), because of what she explained to us before regarding sex differences. However, she considers of the utmost importance the freedom of choice and the equality of opportunities. Regarding her research group, she told us that the ratio of men and women is 1:1, even within the engineers. Finally, Diana also considers that women today are, in general, well represented in science and it takes some time for the equality of gender to be translated into the most senior positions in academia. 6. What’s the most important piece of advice you'd give to a woman thinking of starting a career in academia? The most important piece of advice that Diana gave us is that gender should not influence either our insecurities and fears (at one end) or our arrogance (at the opposite end) to succeed in a particular field of knowledge that we want to pursue. 7. Have you ever been a member of an organization such as Women in Engineering WiE during your path as a student and researcher? What would you say to encourage young students to ingress in this type of organization? Although Diana has never been a member of an association like WiE, she considers organizations such as WiE very important because it was thanks to them that we managed to reach this point where there are (officially) equal opportunities for women and men. Actually, these organizations act like means to accelerate the change of mentalities (although Diana also believes that this change would occur naturally given the legal advancements). However, Diana stresses that these associations (and the public opinion in general) should aim equal opportunities and not equal outcomes and explain us her point of view with an example: it doesn't make sense to force all engineering/ nursing/other courses or even the military service to have 50% men and 50% women .
because this would destroy the variability in tastes and skills that exists between people, some of which is partially represented by the gender; the important is to guarantee the equality of opportunity so that people are free to choose according to their biological differences (inherent to the sex) and cultural and personal experiences. 8. In your opinion, what could be the role of WiE affinity groups in inspiring more young girls to take up STEM disciplines in the near future? Diana believes that the most important thing is to show that there are equal opportunities by giving examples of women in STEM who managed to get there for their value and motivation – whatever the sex ration in those fields. This way of passively passing the message to the youngest people will inspire them naturally. 9. Finally, as a bit of humor, what was the funniest paper title you have ever seen? Diana sent us a notice about “The dead salmon study” who won an Ignobel Prize in Neuroscience (2012). But what is this paper about? This is about a dead salmon who underwent a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scan with the following task: the salmon was shown images of people in social situations and was asked to answer, saying how the person in the situation must be feeling. Of course, the salmon does not comply with the instructions however the researchers were able to find significant increases in "activation", coincidentally, in the brain and spinal cord due to a statistical analysis common problem in fMRI (multiple comparisons across the brain image several voxels). This study almost never saw the light of the day but since it has, it has become a really important study in the field of fMRI because it highlights the importance of correcting your stats. This is one of those papers that first makes you laugh and then makes you think because almost 40% of studies on fMRI being published were not using the corrected comparisons method and, by the time this study won the Ignoble prize, that number had dropped to 10%. Everything due to a deadfish ;)
Her legacy, now more than ever, will forever be cherished.
Carolina Travassos
ISSUE NO. 6 | OCTOBER 2020
Biography MARGARET HEAFIELD HAMILTON Margaret Hamilton was born in Indiana, USA, and is a computer scientist, systems engineer, and business owner. She graduated from Earlham College in mathematics and philosophy and although she first intended to graduate in abstract mathematics in Brandies, Hamilton started to work for Edward Norton Lorenz, in the meteorology department at MIT, where she began programming software to predict the weather, giving a contribution to the Lorenz’s publications on chaos theory and did postgraduate work in meteorology. After in the early 1960’s she joined the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, where later she was the director of the Software Engineering Division. In her department, she and her team, between other marvelous projects, developed onboard flight software for NASA’s Apollo 11 program. That achievement led her to receive, in 2016, the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama, the highest civilian award of the US. In 2019, Google made a giant tribute to Hamilton using more than 107,000 mirrors to reflect moonlight and form her image for one night, the Apollo 11 50th anniversary night.
She was the creator of the term “software engineering”. Hamilton said: “When I first came up with the term, no one had heard of it before, at least in our world. It was an ongoing joke for a long time. They liked to kid me about my radical ideas. It was a memorable day when one of the most respected hardware gurus explained to everyone in a meeting that he agreed with me that the process of building software should also be considered an engineering discipline, just like with hardware. Not because of his acceptance of the new 'term' per se, but because we had earned his and the acceptance of the others in the room as being in an engineering field in its own right.” – Margaret Hamilton, Snyder, Lawrence and Henry, Ray Laura, "Fluency7 with Information Technology", Pearson. The IEEE Software September/October 2018 issue celebrates the 50th anniversary of software engineering, where were recognized several personalities of great merit and Hamilton, among other important women, was one of the pioneers of female success in STEM fields, such as software.
Years later she left MIT and founded Higher Order Software in 1976 and Hamilton Technologies in 1968, two software companies based in Cambridge Massachusetts.
Alexandra Pereira
IVANPAH SOLAR ELECTRIC GENERATING SYSTEM IN CALIFORNIA SOURCE: CNN.COM
ISSUE NO. 6 | OCTOBER 2020
Curiosity of the month... By Rita Mendes “Hidden Figures” (2016) is a movie of biography, drama and history (IMDB: 7.8/10) based on a book by Margot Lee Shetterly. This movie tells the incredible untold story of a team of female African-American mathematicians working at NASA in the 60's who served as the brains behind the launch into orbit of astronaut John Glenn. The movie was nominated for three Oscars and got great reviews because of the way it shines a spotlight on some of the many heroes from history that have not received due credit and recognition for their work because of America's ingrained racism and sexism. The visionary trio Katherine Johnson, played by Taraji P. Henson, Dorothy Vaughan, played by Octavia Spencer, and Mary Jackson, played by Janelle Monae, crossed all gender and racial lines and inspired generations.
Achievement ELVIRA FORTUNATO Portuguese scientist Elvira Fortunato, figuring in our last newsletter curiosity section, was distinguished this month with the Horizon 2020 Impact Award for her invention of the first transparent screen built with eco-sustainable materials (“Invisible” Project). This new technology, co-patented by Samsung, produces screens that are simultaneously .
SOURCE: FAMILY.20THCENTURYSTUDIOS.COM
transparent and conductive and may be used in mobile phones, televisions, computers, or tablets. Besides allowing to obtain higher resolution images, as the materials (mostly zinc oxide) are produced at room temperature, it is possible to manufacture a flexible polymer screen and, for instance, fold it, which cannot be done with conventional technology. Imagine that, fitting a TV in your back pocket… while also saving the planet? Oh, technology, how you amaze us all!
SOURCE: EURONEWS PT
Miriam Santos