My Favorite Fictional #scimom

So now that I've talked about my mother and grandmother, I decided to talk about my bookshelf. Not every girl can be lucky enough to have their very own #scimom, but most kids have access to a library (though fewer every day, but that's a rant for another time).

Madeline L'Engle's most famous work, A Wrinkle In Time, as well as later books in the series, talk about the protagonist's mother, Katherine Murray, who has degrees in microbiology and bacteriology, and actively pursues research while raising her four children.  Meg herself never pursues her PhD, but in later books, serves as a research assistant to her husband Calvin, a marine biologist. The books are also very honest about some of the struggles the exceptionally smart have functioning in society, particularly as adolescents.

ScienceWomen have a lovely list of books focusing on women scientists, but are there any other YA books you all would recommend with female scientist role models, even as minor characters?

For a more general list of literature about scienctists, go here.

My SciGrandmother

I've talked previously about my #STEMmom, but I also have a pretty awesome STEM grandmother. My paternal grandmother was a research assistant for my grandfather, and later, my step grandfather, both of whom were experimental psychologists. After completing her Master's degree, she was dissuaded from finishing a PhD. However, she stayed in science doing significant research for many years, as evidenced by her publication record on audio and visual perception. She was fantastically supportive when my aunt went for her doctorate in neuroscience, and is pleased as peaches that I'm going for my doctorate. I'm very proud to have her as a grandmother.

However, as an engineer, I hear an awful lot of my peers malign psychology and the other social sciences as not "real science". The infamous Coburn report spends a significant fraction of its length attacking social sciences in particular, and proposes eliminating the entire Social, Behavioral and Economics Directorate. Yes, other agencies fund similar research, but other agencies also fund work in the physical sciences (i.e., NIH, DoD, DoE, etc.). The physical sciences strive to understand the universe: social sciences strive to understand humanity. Just because you don't need to know calculus doesn't mean it's not "real science". The scientific method still applies. In good experiments, there are still control groups and sample size considerations. Results from social science research have changed how we approach special education, our understanding of how people interact, how we perceive people with mental illnesses. There's more to psychology than Freud...

Finding Where You Fit

As a compulsive long-term planner, I've been considering lately where I'd like to ultimately end up (though graduation is still a way off...). One thing I've determined is that I don't want to end up at another R1 university a la GiantU. The resources are fantastic, but there's no sense of "department". We're a bunch of separate groups, and after your course work is done, you retreat to your research cave, until you emerge with a thesis. While a decent fraction of the grad students are in two main offices, some groups are hidden in their own little corners, such as mine. It can be stretch to interact with other students simply because I never run into them (especially since I'm something of a morning person).

SnowTech was a rather smaller school, and I honestly wouldn't mind ending up there permanently, given a good snow blower. I liked knowing all of my professors, even the ones I never took a class with. I don't want to be a research rock star. I'd rather be a good teacher and a decent researcher than develop the next carbon nanotube. My undergraduate professors also generally seemed a bit calmer and frankly, happier, than most of the MSE faculty at GiantU. Maybe it's that their teaching time was more valued. Maybe being in the middle of nowhere attracts a mellower kind of person in the first place.

At this point, there are three paths I can see myself taking: the national lab system, small engineering school professor, or industry. This of course assumes openings at any of these, but such is the way of job searching. I'm lucky that my two-body problem involves a non-academic, which in some ways makes him easier to move around. I've been lucky enough to have a summer internships both in the national lab system and industry, so I'm not simply hoping I'd like them better. There's something oddly reassuring about knowing you have to leave work by 6 pm, or the gaurd

For most of my life, I've known at least roughly where I was going to be in 4 years. I started looking at graduate schools in high school. For the first time, I'm honestly unsure. It's a strange sensation.

Shifting into Summer Gear

While classes have been out for well over a month, I'm just now finally shifting into summer gear. Part of this was the near continuous cold rain last month, but also pulling together data for my advisor's speculative abstract. Summer is a wonderful time to delve more deeply into a subject, without the interruptions of class, or quite as many meetings. It can be harder to stay motivated, with the lovely weather/ really poorly regulated office temperatures. Therefore, I'm going to set my self some goals.

My goals for June and July:

Finishing editing manuscripts
Get my advisor to *read* my first manuscript, and figure out where we're sending it
Finish writing preliminary proposal
Put together for August meeting
Run simulations for completely unrelated August data review
Learn Python

August:
Preliminary defense
Present poster
Get second manuscript read (which is a reach, but might as well try).

We'll see how this goes...

Well-Rounded Engineers (or why Humanities Matter)

While SnowTech was an engineering school to the core, my high school education was very much like attending a liberal arts college. I was enrolled in the International Baccalaureate program, which means that, among other things, I can spell baccalaureate correctly on the first try.  It also means that I got a much broader education than the typical American high school student.

As a graduate student, it is pretty much inevitable that you will work with people from other countries, and absolutely inevitable that you will work with people from very different cultural backgrounds than yours. Sure, you'll have common scientific backgrounds, but there's more to an effective working relationship. This is where I think it's important to have that broader background to draw on.

My high school experience involved a very extensive study of modern (i.e., 1760-ish onward) European History, as well as a brief study of Asian and Latin American History. Learning history gives me perspective on more cultural background. More importantly, though, history class is where I really learned how to write a coherent argument. We wrote essay. Lots of essay. Some of them at home, some of them where we were given specific resources to analyze, and others where we had to recall the supporting information without help. We were taught how to structure an argument, and how to support a thesis statement effectively. Over and over, I read about how scientists can't write or communicate. Perhaps it's because they were never really taught how?

I also had to learn a second language (I chose Spanish). More than anything, I think this is something everyone should have to try, just so they can appreciate how difficult it really is. Yes, your Chinese TA may have a thick accent and trouble with articles like "the", but your Chinese would probably be even more unintelligible. Trying to speak a second language helps you learn how to effectively manipulate a restricted vocabulary. Depending on who I'm talking to, I tend to adjust my speech patterns (particularly my enunciation), because I'm aware that my standard mode of speech can be excessively florid, slightly mumbled, and non-linear. Learning Spanish made me a more effective communicator, even though I'm still speaking in English.

Speaking of English, my freshman year focused on learning how to extract meaning from text efficiently. We were assigned 26 books over the course of the year, and while my freakish speed-reading self completely read all but one of them (I just can't get into Dickens), we were taught strategies on how to look for meaning without poring over every single word. I also learned how to edit myself brutally. We were given red pens and our own papers, and she expected them to be bleeding when we turned them back in.

I've already talked about how music lead me to materials science, and it should be obvious that chemistry and physics and math were very important to that as well. However, I think the most important skills I learned in high school weren't the facts or formulas I memorized, but the communication skills I learned outside of STEM classes.

An Advisor to English Dictionary

Part of any working relationship is learning what certain phrases actually mean beyond the direct statement. Below are some of the phrase my advisor uses and their translations.

"We need to meet sooner rather than later": I'm about to double your work load for the next 2 to 6 weeks. You may or may not actually get credit for this.

"I need to think about it": You're going to have to keep nagging me about "it" because it's low on my priority list.

"Soon": yesterday

"Coming up": usually two weeks or less, in reference to "I have a meeting coming up and I need you to do (these things that take longer than two weeks).

"I'm not sure": for a single item, typically means no. If trying to get a sense of priority between two items, it means do both.

"Here is the final version": if you wait another hour, I'll have completely changed my mind about something.

"I'll do it this weekend": I may do it in the next month with sufficient nagging.

DISCLAIMER: every advisor is different. Some translations may not hold for all advisors.

What phrases does your advisor use that can't be taken at face value?

Brass & Goggles: A Metallurgical Perspective

As mentioned in my wedding post, I mentioned Mr.ME and I are having a steampunk wedding. Consequently, we've spent a lot of time explaining what exactly that means. While there are many philosophical debates within the community, and some objections, two of the things almost everyone associates with steampunk are brass and goggles. However, most people don't really stop to think why.

It's right there in the name: steam. Consider the most common modern steam-powered device, quality espresso makers. They're typically made of one of three things: copper, brass and stainless steel. Steampunk is very focused on the Victorian era, which predates the development of stainless steel. Stainless steel is also rather more difficult to machine and form. Copper is also very common in steam applications due to its very high thermal conductivity, but pure copper is very soft.

This brings me to the second part: goggles. In a world where everything is powered by steam, you're then constantly surrounded by pressure vessels. Steam engines fundamentally transform thermal energy to mechanical energy via pressurized steam. In a world of pressure vessel, ruptures happen, and if they do, I'd like to be wearing goggles when it does. Furthermore, many of the preferred goggles are actually based on brazing or welding goggles, two of the more common processes for joining brass or copper.

Which brings me back to brass. In many ways, it's the optimal material for a world of steam and filigree. Being an alloy of copper and zinc, it retains many of copper's thermal properties. Good conductivity is important when using inefficient heat sources, such as wood and coal. Brass also has much better mechanical properties than pure copper, allowing vessels to operate at higher pressures, and gears to resist wear. It's corrosion resistant compared to the steels available at the time, and the melting point allows for castability. Adding small amounts of lead (as the Victorians likely would) can dramatically improve machinability. All in all, this makes for good steam powered machines.

Brass and goggles: not just because they look good.