Women Scientists From The United States

"Until a few years ago, I was a “wayward” mathematician. I thought all I could do was teach and I wanted out. While teaching is noble and one of the highest callings, I wanted to do something other than my tenure-track position."

"Now don’t get me wrong, I knew mathematicians did more than teach. But personally, I had not done a lot of applied mathematical work. Nothing wrong with it, I just hadn’t. (My area of research was a branch of Combinatorics called Matroid Theory.) However, when I started looking I found all kinds of employment opportunities."

"But we didn't tend to do that here. It was just a different style of living; people did things differently. And I think we were more involved in our own personal things than the rest of the neighborhood."

"When I finished my PhD, there didn’t seem to be a shortage of academic jobs. You might not get a position at Research I institution, but you could find a tenure-track position at a pretty decent institution and be happy."

"During the six weeks academic residency, I and 24 other Young Africans from 21 different countries were hosted by one of the top universities in the United States; Drexel University, located at the heart of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania."

"Amongst us were persons with disabilities as well as persons with different personalities and sexual orientations. We all learned together and enjoyed equal opportunities in a fully inclusive environment that made learning interesting for all."

"I had the opportunity to visit schools for the deaf, libraries for the blind, and art therapy centers. These visits afforded me a firsthand appreciation of how serious the inclusion of persons with disabilities mattered to the American people."

"My application to the Mandela Washington Fellowship was driven by my quest for an experiential learning program that would improve my capacity in providing educational services and opportunities to children with disabilities and adolescent girls."

"I just thought it would be fascinating. It's just something that I had thought about doing. Now, my original plans, when I was a little girl, I wanted to be a nurse, but I think that was because my mother instilled that in me, because when I grew up, nursing and teaching were"

"The ASBMB has profoundly influenced discovery, and the importance of BMB in our current era is growing, not shrinking. This is obvious just by looking at the approximately one-third of human open reading frames and majority of noncoding RNAs whose functions are unknown and the overwhelming numbers of new regulatory connections generated from large-scale studies. Our discipline is the cornerstone of what’s needed to discover the functions of new molecules and mechanisms underlying their connectios."

"My favorite academic experience occurred during our personality and leadership assessment session. As a Choleric with keen attention to details and work performance, I have thought to myself a few times that I was excessive, but learning about my strengths and confirming its significance to my work was empowering. I am now deliberate about my choice of support teammates."

"My first postdoctoral job was with Christoph de Haën at the University of Washington, where I studied hormone receptor binding. Christoph was unable to renew his funding and had to close his lab, and that’s how I learned about the importance of grants! He ended up great anyway, eventually becoming director of preclinical research at Bracco and director of the Milano Research Center. I then moved to the lab of the late Edwin Krebs for a second postdoc, where I was among the first to describe MAP kinases and MAP kinase kinases. That started my career in signal transduction."

"I still work on MAP kinase and other signaling pathways. When I started at the University of Colorado, I began applying the new technology of protein mass spectrometry to address questions in signaling. This was done in collaboration with my late partner, Katheryn Resing. My lab’s applications of proteomics to signal transduction have led to broad discoveries, ranging from new mechanisms for cell regulation to mechanisms for allosteric control of MAP kinases."

"I attended the ASBMB annual meeting during my graduate studies, and it was at this meeting that I gave my first public research talk and got to meet the leaders in enzymology. That was a spectacular experience. When at the end of my first postdoc I had no way to pay for an accepted manuscript, the Journal of Biological Chemistry generously waived page charges, allowing me to publish. Since then, I’ve helped organize symposia at the annual meeting and served on the ASBMB Council. It was the support by the ASBMB during the crucial early years of my career that engendered my long-lasting love for this society."

"After finishing a high school degree overseas, I majored in chemistry at the University of Washington in Seattle and did undergraduate research in X-ray crystallography with the late Lyle Jensen and protein hydrodynamics with David Teller. I obtained my Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, where I studied enzymology with Judith Klinman. Judith is an incredibly deep thinker as well as a generous and courageous individual who continues to be one of my greatest inspirations."

"I am very proud of all the students that I have taught, supervised in research or summer programs, or mentored over my 35-plus years as a faculty member at Spelman College, a place that supported me through enough different roles and opportunities that I enjoyed going to work every day."

"I grew up on U.S. military bases in Korea and Japan. My father emigrated from Korea and worked at the U.S. embassies in Seoul and Tokyo. My mother was a finance clerk at the embassy. I have one brother who’s an engineer and builds airplanes."

"I try to be involved in every aspect of my lab, but I let my students and postdocs — currently eight in all — work independently enough to discover their strengths, while following behind to support them. That’s not too different from the way I view leadership elsewhere, where my instinct is to try to solve the most important problems and avoid fixing what’s not broken."

"I was always interested in science. When John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth, I remember riding my tricycle and thinking that I too wanted to be an astronaut. Later, when I became an assistant professor at the University of Colorado, three of my first lab members had segued into biochemistry after first starting in aerospace engineering. So I appreciate how NASA and other big-science efforts promote science by inspiring kids."

"I don't know how much I helped but he gave me credit on the paper. That was a boost to my ego and really got me going in math."

"Male faculty tend to be less sensitive to the ways in which women treat their studies."

"Women make a B on an exam and they are crushed, they think it's terrible. Men make a B and they think it's great."

"That was the one course that didn't come easily, let's put it that way."

"I’m not a flashy or provocative person, although I am unafraid of taking a stand when it’s important. As president, I plan to focus on gaps and weaknesses at the ASBMB and the detailed steps needed to address them."

"My mother only finished the 12th grade but she was always excited about math."

"My math teacher, Mr. Frank Holly, would not let me stop doing math."

"I grew up on a small farm in Camp Hill, Alabama, with my four siblings. My elementary school education took place in a one-room school house in my community. Although my love of mathematics was passed down from my mother, both of my parents instilled in me a love of learning and a concern for the education of others."

"I received a very strong public school education. For as long as I can remember, even before I started school, I had a love for mathematics. I think there was something about both the logic of math and the fact that in math there was a “right answer” that appealed to me (clearly before I knew about stochastic mathematics)."

"For a long time, I wanted to be a math teacher, but in high school I started to think about working in jobs where I could “apply” mathematics (though I only had a vague idea of what that meant)."

"In 1980 I joined AT&T Bell Laboratories in Holmdel, NJ. Eventually I had a 25- year career at Bell Laboratories and, after the breakup of the Bell System, AT&T Laboratories."

"I grew up in 1960’s in Winston Salem, NC. in a low-income, single parent household. At the time, the schools in Winston-Salem were segregated but, due primarily to the dedication of my teachers and my own motivation"

"During my time at AT&T I learned the importance of mentoring. I have mentored hundreds of people over my career, first at AT&T and, more recently, at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHUAPL), where I continued my career after leaving AT&T. I am very proud of the impact I have had on the careers of so many people."

"I didn't know they lay of the land," quips Bozeman. They wanted her to go back to school to finish her Ph.D. She just looked at them thinking, I have a husband and two small children, how am I going to go back to Vanderbilt four hours away?"

"Right now, we have three priorities. First is to recapture the annual meeting’s reputation as a must-attend event. Second is to expand our visibility and membership, especially among young investigators. Third is to restore the prominence and stature of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, where we’ve been fortunate to appoint Lila Gierasch as editor-in-chief and Fred Guengerich as deputy editor."

"I believed I was where I was supposed to be. When I was a student, my mentor told me I’d make a good research mathematician. I said, “What is that?” and he told me I’d have to find out for myself. At NASA, I happened to be at the right place at the right time. When you put bright people in a room and they had something to do, they worked on it until they got it done. But honestly, it was never work to me."

"We put in some long hours at times, and I had three children at home. But they were very responsible, and I had family and friends who helped look after them."

"I’ve spent a lot of time tutoring kids in math as a volunteer. I’ve always enjoyed helping people understand what they can find in math. There’s no judgment there."

"In the cafeteria, we just ignored the sign [for segregated seating]. But at some point, we started eating at our desks. When we left work, our lives were definitely separate — separate communities, separate schools for our children, separate grocery stores and churches."

"But then we’d be back with our colleagues on the job. People are people. My father’s advice helped. He said, “You’re no better than anybody else, but nobody is better than you.”"

"I was always interested in math. I counted everything as a child — the number of steps up the stairs, the dishes, the steps to church. Those thoughts just came naturally. While I skipped grades in school, my parents made sure I stayed grounded."

"English Quotation"

"It’s just there. You can’t do anything without it. It’s in everything. I like to work problems. If you do your best, nobody can ask you to do it over again. I never had to repeat what I did."

"That’s not the world I want to live in."

"I want to live in a world where we’re not trying to disenfranchise humans or devalue labor."

"Iwant to live in a world where instead of there being one company in one place in the world with one dominant model."

"I want a different kind of root motivation for technology that puts human welfare first."

"My hope is that our work counteracts the drive to centralize power and disenfranchise human beings."

"AI tools that actually help people and not try to replace them."

"We have many people who are each working to support their communities in some way and sharing profits back."

"The primary motivation with all of these AI technologies is either to have more warfare or to have more profit."