Women in Science: From the Exception to the Rule

While women continue to be underrepresented in science, the evolution of their journeys reveals a dynamic, inspiring and often overlooked narrative.

In her book, “The Exceptions,” Kate Zernike chronicles the remarkable life of Nancy Hopkins, a pioneering force in genetics who began her studies in the 1960s — a time when success and recognition in science was largely inaccessible to women. By the time Hopkins had become a noted molecular geneticist and cancer researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) nearly 40 years later, women were still denied the pay, prospects and prestige handed to men of lesser accomplishments.

Since then, significant progress has been made, including in 1999, when Hopkins led 16 women faculty in a campaign that culminated in MIT publicly admitting to a long history of discrimination against female scientists. By keeping such milestones in sight, we are inspired to commemorate other victories for women in science and motivated to confront the challenges that remain.

Join Zernike as she sits down with Kelsey Martin and Priya Rajasethupathy, two women at different stages in their scientific careers in neuroscience, for a conversation that examines these questions and issues by reflecting on their own experiences in the field.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:

Kelsey Martin joined the Simons Foundation in September 2021 and is the executive vice president of SFARI and the Simons Foundation Neuroscience Collaborations. She previously served as dean of the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), chair of the UCLA Department of Biological Chemistry and professor in the UCLA Department of Biological Chemistry and the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences. Her research addresses the cellular and molecular biology of long-term synaptic plasticity and memory, with a focus on experience-dependent regulation of gene expression in neurons. Her lab has discovered signaling molecules that travel from stimulated synapses to the nucleus to impact transcription. They have also elucidated functions for the translation of synaptically localized mRNAs during synapse formation and plasticity. As dean at UCLA, Martin established programs in precision health and computational medicine and developed a series of interdepartmental research initiatives spanning basic through clinical research.

Priya Rajasethupathy is the Jonathan M. Nelson Family Associate Professor and head of the Laboratory of Neural Dynamics & Cognition at the Rockefeller University. She obtained her B.A. from Cornell University and an M.D. and Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Columbia University, working with Eric Kandel. She did her post-doctoral work at Stanford University with Karl Deisseroth. Rajasethupathy is a Vallee, Searle and Klingenstein Scholar and has been a recipient of an NIH New Innovator Award, a Presidential Early Career Award and the MIND Prize.

Kate Zernike has been a reporter for The New York Times since 2000. She was a member of the team that won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for stories about al-Qaeda before and after the 9/11 terror attacks. She was previously a reporter for The Boston Globe, where she broke the story of MIT’s admission that it had discriminated against women on its faculty, on which “The Exceptions” is based. The daughter and granddaughter of scientists, she is a graduate of Trinity College at the University of Toronto and the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University.