To mark International Women’s Day this year, UBC is hosting an event that examines female leadership in science, engineering and medicine. Historically women have been underrepresented in these fields but today we are moving toward more equal representation, and organizers of the event say diversity is critical to scientific discovery.
The Faculty of Medicine’s Judy Illes will be the moderator of “100 Years WISE: Women in Science and Engineering, Bridging the Past and the Future.” A UBC Centennial celebration, the event is taking place March 9 at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts. Dr. Illes is a Professor of Neurology and Director of the National Core for Neuroethics at UBC.
“My colleagues and I felt it was important to showcase women who are leaders in the sciences, medicine and engineering,” Dr. Illes says. “We’re pleased that Nadine Caron, the first aboriginal woman to graduate from the UBC Faculty of Medicine, Maria Klawe, president of Harvey Mudd College (a top U.S. engineering, science and mathematics college), Sheri Sheppard, an award-winning engineering professor from Stanford, and others will be joining us. Many of these women went to school and started their careers when men dominated their fields. Today they are all recognized for the incredible contributions they’ve made and more importantly for how they are changing the status quo.”
Dr. Illes adds, “I sat on the jury for the Canadian Science and Engineering Hall of Fame for several years and felt compelled to resign when not a single woman was nominated and little progress was being made to address this gap. Women leaders must be celebrated and recognized to encourage future leaders in science and engineering. With this event, we’ll hear directly from women about what they’ve learned, their advice for future leaders, and the changes that still need to be made.”
Dr. Illes was co-author, along with Simon Peacock, the Dean of the Faculty of Science, and Elizabeth Croft, the Associate Dean for Education and Professional Development in the Faculty of Applied Science, of a March 7 opinion piece about the topic in the Vancouver Sun. Here is an excerpt:
“Over the past years, the representation of women and men has been approximately 50-50 among incoming medical students, a big leap from 1954 when there were only two women in the first graduating class: Dr. Margaret Hoehn, known for her work with Parkinson’s disease, and Dr. Marjorie Jansch, who continued on to family practice. Dr. Edith McGeer, who came to UBC in that same year, is universally acknowledged as one of the leading researchers on Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases. Together with her husband and Ludmila (Lola) Zledowicz, one of B.C.’s first female neurologists, she was one of the first to study levodopa for treating Parkinson’s Disease. Dr. B. Lynn Beattie established the province’s leading Clinic for Alzheimer Disease and Related Disorders at UBC Hospital in 1983. After more than 25 years, she is still a force in every aspect of geriatric medicine, and recently she forged new ground in clinical neuroethics, working tirelessly to bridge traditional understanding of wellness and disease with western biomedical practice among First Nations.”