Ada Lovelace day is held on the 2nd Tuesday of every October. It is an annual event to celebrate and raise awareness to the contributions of women in STEM fields.
Jennifer Doyle serves as Chair for the School of Natural Science and instructor of biology courses. Celebrating Ada Lovelace Day is a great opportunity to engage with professors and explore topics related to women in STEM, technology, and the contributions of Ada Lovelace herself.
How do you think Ada Lovelace’s contributions to computing have impacted research methods in the natural sciences?
Ada Lovelace was a visionary: she was the first to write about algorithms and modern computing a hundred years before modern computers even existed. From her foundation, modern computer programming has led to leaps in scientific breakthroughs in every STEM field. Research needs to handle large data sets and provide meaningful and complex computations. What used to take years of manual calculations can now be processed with astonishing speed.
In your experience, what are some of the key barriers women face in natural sciences today, and how can we work to dismantle them?
Ada Lovelace faced barriers that are hard to comprehend in today’s context. Women did not have access to universities and were not regarded as intelligent enough for such scientific thought. Today, barriers still exist, even if they are not as obvious. Fewer women persist in STEM fields, and those that do face a substantial pay gap.
To dismantle barriers is to better understand what causes them. Recent studies point to the “confidence gap” between men and women in STEM fields. In other words, women do not feel as confident in their STEM skills as men. Efforts to boost self-efficacy aim to increase the number of women in the STEM fields and promote self-confidence to negotiate for higher-paying STEM occupations. It is important that these efforts begin early and are sustained through all educational levels.
What programs or initiatives have you seen that effectively encourage young women to engage with the natural sciences?
National efforts such as Girls Who Code and Million Women Mentors seek to broaden gender diversity and reduce the confidence gap. They engage young women and provide positive role models. Women in STEM sharing their stories can provide that confidence boost to make STEM fields more welcoming. I believe that engaged hands-on teachers and mentors make the biggest difference.
What significance do you find in celebrating Ada Lovelace Day within the context of the natural sciences?
“That brain of mine is something more than merely mortal, as time will show” -Ada Lovelace.
To me, this Ada Lovelace quote sums her day up nicely- Imagination and creativity are key. We must think of what can be even if at present, technology does not exist. Today’s wild and impossible ideas lead us to future advances beyond our lifetime.
Who are some contemporary women in the natural sciences that you admire, and what can we learn from their journeys?
As a biologist, I love the story of international collaboration between the labs of Doctors Jennifer Doudna, Emmanuelle Charpentier, and others for the advances in gene editing and CRISPR. But, on a more personal level, I have been fortunate to have outstanding women role models who have chipped away at those barriers before me. Dr. Lisa Vaillancourt, my graduate school mentor, showed me the courage and resilience to excel in fields with few women colleagues. My Mom loved teaching elementary math and science, but she had very limited professional options in STEM when she went to college because she was a woman. I am forever grateful for their guidance, and from them, I learned to fight my self-doubt and have the confidence to know that I belong in STEM. The barriers in my STEM journey were lowered because of all the women who came before me, and I strive to lessen the barriers my students face. We must support each other.
To learn more about Ada Lovelace Day, visit https://nationaltoday.com/ada-lovelace-day/ to learn more.