Get inspired by women inventors



Hear a 30-second review of the book, Women Invent! Two Centuries of Discoveries That Have Shaped Our World, by Susan Casey.

A conversation with a baboon scientist

"From Babies to Baboons: One Woman's Path to Success" is a conversation between Cornell graduate student Emily Cramer and leading biologist Jeanne Altmann, who is highly respected for adding to our knowledge of baboons, and for her 1974 article about the best ways to observe animal behavior.

Great resource on STEM careers



Need info about a career as an athletic trainer, actuary, aquarist, and over 100 less mysterious professions? Go to the Science Buddies website. Look for the careers that are "In Demand!" Enjoy the videos, interviews, and profiles.

High-paying jobs in demand

Which fields are growing and offer well-paying jobs? STEM careers!

But which STEM jobs are growing fast? Read about the top five.

Swimming with the world's biggest fish

Photo by Tonny Watanebe



Watch marine biologist Tierney Thys tell stories about her studies of the giant ocean sunfish. This is the world's heaviest bony fish. It can reach 5,000 pounds!

LINKS

 

* Marine biologist Tierney Thys.  As a kid, she loved being in the water. She learned to dive at age 15. Read her bio.

* Weird! All about sunfish: http://www.oceansunfish.org/

High school scientists publish!

...in the Journal of Experimental Secondary Science, a professionally reviewed academic journal of high school student research. The journal's mission is to promote student research and science literacy.

Read the published articles at the website and see the submission guidelines.

High school scientists who conducted original research, performed the experiments themselves, and wrote up the results, can submit manuscripts for publication in this journal. A school teacher must co-author the article. The research can be conducted at school or during an internship at a university research lab (in which case the mentor also co-authors the article). The authors experience the review and revision process that is standard in scientific publishing.

Treating blindness with robotics

Watch neuroscientist Sheila Nirenberg talk about how she wants to treat some types of blindness, by hooking into the optic nerve and sending signals from a camera directly to the brain.

For more on how to do this without surgery--with only an injection and special glasses!--watch the Q&A beginning at 3 minutes.

Read the article that explains that Nirenberg's team used gene therapy to add a special protein to specific cells in the eyes of blind mice, to make them responsive to light. Next, a pair of glasses containing a tiny video camera and computer used a math recipe (algorithm) to turn images into mini light flashes, which the glasses were equipped to shine into the eye. Then the blind mice could see!

Meet a world-class earthquake expert

Seismogram of Aug 23, 11 earthquake that shook east coast of U.S.

Her name is Lucy Jones and she's known as "the Earthquake Lady." The Smithsonian magazine calls her "one of the most influential seismologists in the world." Read about her work and fascinating career path, beginning at age eight, in her profile.

More on pharmacy as a career

Watch videos about pharmacy as a career at the website, Pharmacy is Right for Me.

For more, go to my initial pharmacy blog post, "Follow a hospital pharmacist," and don't forget to scroll down to the links at the bottom.

The unstoppable girl scientist

The absolutely amazing high school senior Samantha Garvey is a semifinalist in the prestigious Intel science competition! No matter what happens, she's going to college.  Meet her in this news clip.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Dazzling: color-coded surgery!

Surgeon Quyen Nguyen uses a technique that makes only cancer tumors glow--and not nearby healthy tissue, or vice-versa--to help surgeons see exactly what to remove and what to leave intact. Watch her explain it with brilliant images in this video.

Top pay for girls

To help pick the right career for you, find out how much money you’re likely to make.

The article, “The Best-Paying Jobs For Women in 2011,” ranks the ten top-paying jobs for women in 2010.

Look at the graph below. It represents those ten top-paying jobs.

Each job is shown as a stack of coins. The more coins, the more pay.

The gold coins are STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, or Math) careers. How many of the top-paying careers for women are STEM careers?

BEST-PAYING JOBS FOR WOMEN



The STEM career women who are paid the most are… physicians and surgeons! The close seconds are pharmacists.

LINK

For a quick-and-easy overview of physician and surgeon careers, listen to the podcast at the Sloan Career Cornerstone Center. It’s an introduction to the required schooling, a day-in-the-life of a physician or surgeon, salary info, where physicians or surgeons work, and how their employment will grow much faster than in other professions.



Follow a computer graphic artist illuminating the movie “WALL•E” – a STEM career glimpse and puzzle

Have you seen "Brave," "Up," or "WALL•E"?

Think about your favorite one. Were you swept away?

You probably didn't stop to think of this while enjoying the movie, but it was created from scratch, image after countless image, frame by frame, by artists using complex computer programs.

And those programs are used and developed by people like Danielle Feinberg, a Director of Photography for Lighting at Pixar. When asked what she loves best, computers or art, her answer is, "programming computers to create awesome art work!" Danielle is one of several hundred team members who bring these movies to a theater near you.

Danielle Feinberg

To make a computer animated (or "digitally animated") movie, creators first dream up the story and "pitch it"--they talk big shots into seeing the possibilities. Next, they put it in writing in a short "story treatment."

Artists hand-sketch a comic-book version--the "storyboards." Actors record the characters' voices, reading scripts and improvising. The editorial team puts together storyboards and voices to create a draft--the reels of the film's sequences. .

The art department creates, with pencils, paintbrushes, paper and also computers, art work to describe the look and feel of the characters and their world. Soon everyone uses computer software to do each step. .

Model builders build the characters, sets and props in the computer as 3D (3-dimensional) objects, plotting points using the X, Y and Z axes. Modelers and articulators add controls that act like hinges so they can move parts like elbows or doors. .

The layout crew places the characters and camera in the world, and designs each camera move (or "shot"). Like puppeteers, animators create movements and facial expressions. They let the computer do the "in-betweening," filling in the movement between frames. .

Clap! Bang! Boom! From the beginning to the end of the whole process, the editorial team rearranges the shots, and adds music and sound effects to create the ever-evolving, current version of the movie. .

Shaders added to all the objects describe color, texture and how the material interacts with light (reflective, translucent, dull, etc.). Visual Special Effects artists use all kinds of physics to create fire, explosions, mist and more. The lighting team adds virtual lights and reflections that support the mood and story, and reveal the emotions in each scene. .

Finally, the rendering team sends the files that contain all of this information off to a giant "farm" of computers, where millions of calculations are done to create each pixel on every frame of the final movie. .

Imagine stopping the movie on one image or frame. As Danielle explains, a computer image is made up of over 1.5 million pixels. Think of one pixel on WALL•E's face. It's yellow because that's WALL•E's color. But if the sun is shining from the right and it's late in the day and a reflection is hitting him right at that pixel while the wind is blowing dust around, all these factors are going to affect the exact shade of yellow of that pixel, including in relationship to other pixels around it. The computer must do billions of calculations to take into account all those subtle effects--pixel by pixel, frame by frame, 24 frames per seconds, some 90 minutes per film. .

And the computer software is used, cajoled, finessed, and sometimes even "tricked" by Danielle and her team to create these images that make up a film. .

How exactly does Danielle do it? From one of the three computers at her desk, Danielle picks a shot or series of shots (a "sequence") to work on. She retrieves from the Pixar network all the information ("data") created by everyone else so far, about sets, characters, camera, animation and materials. She looks at the image ("direction") from the art department that shows the time of day, weather or mood of the lighting. Then she adds lights into the 3D world inside the computer, using 30 or 40 controls over each light (the sun, a lamp, reflections...) to build up the image to look like the art reference.

Each morning, Danielle reviews the results of her work by watching the overnight "renders"--a single frame takes hours of computer calculations to render, anywhere from a couple of hours to 90 hours or more in extreme cases. She adjusts the lighting to get closer and closer to the desired look, and fixes the myriad of technical issues that can crop up in the complex software. This takes a week to a month or more depending on how big a chunk of movie she's working on. Danielle and the lighting artists each sit down with the director (who is responsible for the creative content) to show him or her their work, hoping for a "Final!" from the director, meaning that their work on that shot is done and ready to go into the movie.

PUZZLE: Can you spot WALL•E in the frame below, shown before lighting?

Click here for the answer, and to see the frame after lighting.
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She also works with her team to come up with new ways to create what each film needs, such as how to make the world look like it's underwater for "Finding Nemo" or how to create a messy, polluted, dusty world in "WALL•E." Using physics, geometry, a lot of math, and computer programming skills, Danielle and the other animation scientists add to the software for each movie. They make each new world or character possible. And so from one Pixar team to the next, step by painstaking, exhilarating step, vibrant characters and exotic worlds burst alive.

Finally, photoscientists record the movie in a form that can be played in the theater, as well as on televisions, computers, and mobile screens.

Then, images brimming with light tell you a story, make you gasp, laugh, or blink away tears. And now you know how, with math and science and a lot of heart, Danielle makes it happen, lighting the way on screen and in real life.

ABOUT DANIELLE FEINBERG

Director of Photography - Lighting

Pixar Animation Studios

* Danielle began her career at Pixar Animation Studios in February 1997 as a Render Technical Director (also called a "Render Wrangler") on the feature film "A Bug's Life." She quickly discovered her love for lighting and went on to light many of Pixar's feature films including "Toy Story 2," "Monsters, Inc.," and the Academy Award(R)-winning "Finding Nemo," "The Incredibles" and "Ratatouille." Danielle worked as the Director of Photography for Lighting on another Oscar(R)-winning feature, "WALL•E," and is now working on the look for her next project, Disney•Pixar's 2012 summer release, "Brave."

* Danielle's love of combining computers and art began when she was eight years old, and first programmed a logo turtle to create images. This eventually led her to a Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science from Harvard University. Now, in addition to her Pixar work, she works with teenage girls, encouraging them to pursue math and science by demonstrating to them the same beautiful simplicity she found with the programmed art of the Logo turtle. .

Danielle (seated, in black T-shirt)

inspires girls to follow their dreams at a Tech Trek science camp.

* When Danielle is not working, she loves to travel, shoot photographs, and play sports like flag football.

LINKS AND MORE

* See Danielle when she was in elementary school.

* Watch Danielle talk about the making of "WALL•E" on the DVD Bonus Features (Disc 2, Behind the Scenes, "The Imperfect Lens").

* Another interesting "WALL•E" DVD bonus feature is "Life of a Shot."

* Take a video tour of Pixar, complete with a giant poofy armchair and play areas.

* See profiles, art work, and interviews of artists such as animators, a director of photography, and a sculptor who work at Pixar.

* See the different looks created by software for... trash in "WALL•E."

* Visit Tribeca Flashpoint Academy, a Digital Media Arts College in Chicago. It offers two-year college degrees to train arts or entertainment professionals to work on computer-based specialties such as games, recording, or animation. Tribeca Flashpoint also offers an abbreviated, Digital Bootcamp program for high school students grades 10 through 12. Students experience a taste of Tribeca Flashpoint's program and complete one portfolio piece.

* Create your own animated film. The New York Film Academy Summer Film and Acting Camps for teens and tweens include 3D Computer Animation Camps in New York City and at Harvard University. Students with little or no experience learn how to build objects and creatures, animate them, and add color, light, and sound, to create their own short film!

* For creative kids who love computers: look at the Digital Media Academy teen summer camps. The filmmaking camp helps you start your career in the movie business by learning scriptwriting, storyboarding, editing, visual effects, and more.

* iD Tech Camps include 3D Computer Animation summer camps, where you can create your own characters and bring them to life, then take home a portfolio and a trial version of the software.

Updated on July 13, 2012

They reached for the stars

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Women at NASA : videos and essays about dozens of them, how they pursued their dreams, overcame obstacles, and now play a vital role.

From the classroom to outer space

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If you're not sure what science classes can do for you, read Natalie Batalha's recollections of how she began to discover her own strengths once she enrolled in a physics course in college. It made her realize how much she loved science.

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From that point on, her passion and career skyrocketed. Today she's an astronomer on the NASA team assigned to the Kepler mission: searching for Earth-like planets.
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Watch Natalie at work in this video, in which she and other astronomers explain the Kepler mission. Its key scientific instrument is a space telescope. Since it was launched in March 2009, it has allowed researchers to detect hundreds of planets that might be Earth-like.

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At the end of the video, Natalie proudly announces a historical milestone: on January 10, 2010, the Kepler team detected the first rocky planet orbiting a star other than our sun.
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Kepler 10-b, the first rocky planet orbiting a start other than our sun

A vision by artist Dana Berry

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Although it's too hot to support life, the discovery of a rocky planet (as opposed to, say, a gas planet) is extraordinarily significant because a rocky planet might host life. On a rocky planet, the most important requirement for life as we know it, liquid water, can pool and gather the substances that life needs.
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And so the scientists keep on searching for answers to soul-stirring questions. Are we alone? Or are there other Earths out there?

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LINKS AND MORE

* Hear Natalie's thoughts on the historical rocky planet discovery, in this video.

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* See a movie about Natalie's career path.

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* Read a brief description of astronomy.

* Go on a virtual field trip to the Palomar Observatory in California.

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* FAQ for high school students.

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* "The Ultimate Astronomy Career Guide" is an annotated compilation of carefully selected links to excellent career guides, overviews, interviews, day-in-the-lie, articles, and info on specialties.

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* Reference for the details in this post about rocky planets, and a great read: Planet Hunter - Geoff Marcy and the Search for Other Earths by Vicki Oransky Wittenstein.

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Geoff Marcy is one of the Kepler astronomers. He appears in the video about the mission.
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* Listen to podcasts by astronomers about lots of topics such as multiples universes, our explosive sun, black holes, and more. This is offered by the Astronomy Society of the Pacific.

Updated October 8, 2011

Follow a geochemist to Antarctica – a STEM career glimpse

by Jennifer Middleton, B.A. (Bachelor of Arts, Earth and Planetary Science)

If you like outdoor adventures, you might love to be a geochemist.

Geochemists are both geologists and chemists. As geologists, they study the world around them by observing rocks. As chemists, they examine the compounds and elements that things are made of. Geochemists use the compositions of rocks (or fluids, or gases) to understand how Earth systems (such as volcanism or the climate) work now or how they worked in the past.

As a geochemist, I study the history of Antarctic glaciers by analyzing rock samples from the Dry Valleys of Antarctica.



The Dry Valleys region is a cold desert, so dry that it doesn’t get enough snow to be covered with ice. Have the Dry Valleys always been ice-free, or were they ever covered by ice sheets? Scientists need to understand how the Antarctic ice sheets behaved in the past in order to accurately predict how they will react to global warming. Geochemists are detectives who can decode the clues hidden within the region’s rocks, by measuring isotopes.

Isotopes, such as neon-20 and neon-21, are variations of the same chemical element with different masses. When a rock is exposed, high energy particles from outer space (cosmic radiation) produce special isotopes (cosmogenic nuclides) in the rock. Some (such as neon-21) are stable and always stay in the rock grain in which they are produced. Others (such as beryllium-10) are unstable and radioactively decay over time. A rock covered by thick ice is shielded from cosmic radiation and no new cosmogenic nuclides are produced. Beneath the ice, the number of stable nuclides stays the same, but the number of unstable nuclides goes down as they decay. The proportions of cosmogenic nuclides in a rock reveal whether it was ever covered by a glacier. With enough rock samples, we can find out what an ice sheet looked like millions of years ago.

First, our team needed to go to Antarctica to collect samples (the best part of studying the Earth is that you get to see the world). Because Antarctica is in the southern hemisphere, we did our field work between November and January during the Antarctic summer (otherwise it would be too cold). Just getting to our field site (where we wanted to collect samples) required a long flight in a military plane from New Zealand to McMurdo Station (the major U.S. research station in Antarctica), a short helicopter ride to our campsite in the Dry Valleys, and a short hike to the field site.

Every morning, we woke up in a beautiful landscape all to ourselves. We carried backpacks containing sample collecting gear, extra warm clothes, a thermos of hot water (even in a cold desert we needed to stay hydrated) and plenty of snacks. No flashlights though—the sun never sets during the Antarctic summer!

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At the field site, we sampled the bedrock, not loose rocks such as boulders, which might have been moved from elsewhere. We made sure that the rock could “see” the sky so it had enough cosmogenic nuclides to tell us something about the past. We avoided rocks that were shielded by other rocks. We also wanted rocks made of large grains, because when we analyze them in the lab, we pick the grains one by one with tweezers, so the bigger the better. Finally, we looked for a vulnerable spot (near an edge or a crack) so that it wouldn’t be too hard to break off a chunk.

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This chunk had to be about the size of a grapefruit. Collecting it usually took a few good whacks with a hammer and a well-placed chisel, but sometimes it took me several minutes of rock abuse before the sample was free. Next, I took the GPS coordinates of the sample location and wrote them, along with the sample name (not Bob, but for example, SR-08-007 for the seventh sample taken in Sessrumnir Valley during the 2008 field season), in my field notebook and on a canvas sample bag. I also wrote down the type of rock, the name of the day’s field site, and the amount of shielding from nearby mountains, cliffs or ridges. I needed to keep track of all of this information to interpret the data we would get from analyzing the sample.

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I took photos of the sample and surroundings to remember all of the details months or years later. Finally, I stuffed the sample into the bag and moved on to collect another sample. At the end of the day, I put all of my samples in my pack to carry all 20-30 pounds back to camp. There, we packed our bagged samples together in wooden boxes to be flown back to McMurdo Station, then shipped to the U.S.
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We needed a lot of samples from many different places to develop a good understanding of what the region was like in the past. We spent a month camping around the Dry Valleys and collecting samples.

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We returned to our lab at Harvard University in January 2009. But our samples didn’t leave Antarctica until February, when the sea ice around McMurdo Station got thin enough for a ship to come pick them up. They didn’t arrive at our lab until April 2009. Even then, we had to prepare each sample before the analysis could begin.
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LAB WORK DETAILS: To prepare each sample, I crushed a piece and separated the grains. Under a microscope, I used tweezers to pick out the grains I wanted: only grains of pure quartz from our sandstone samples, because the cosmogenic nuclides we wanted to measure are produced only in quartz. This step took a few hours for each sample. In time I started to enjoy the simple beauty of clear quartz grains at high magnification.

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Next, I soaked the quartz grains in a strong acid solution to remove contaminants from the outside of each grain (this was the only time in my science career when I actually wore a lab coat). Contaminants mess up measurements, giving us the wrong information about what really happened in the Dry Valleys. After the acid soak, I rinsed the grains with purified water (the acid is a contaminant too!), dried them, weighed them, and wrapped them in niobium foil (like aluminum foil, but stronger and more expensive) before loading them into the machine that measures isotopes (the mass spectrometer).
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With the measurements, the mass of the rock grains we put into the machine, and the information we gathered about each sample in the field, we can calculate how much of the cosmogenic nuclides were in each sample and deduce the exposure history of our field site.

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Our results and conclusions will help support or rule out different hypotheses about the past and future of the climate of Antarctica, and help settle current debates among scientists world-wide. So, were the Dry Valleys covered by an ice sheet millions of years ago? If they were covered, when did this happen and for how long? Well, we’re still working on it, but I’ll let you know when I find out.

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ABOUT JENNIFER MIDDLETON
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When Jenny is not working, she loves reading, watching scientifically inaccurate natural disaster movies, and playing outside.

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LINKS
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* Relive Jenny's expedition in Antarctica at her team's blog.

* Read an article about Jenny's mission in Antarctica.

* Read a description of geochemist careers.

* For an overview of geoscientist careers, click on “Listen to the podcast…” at the Sloan Career Cornerstone Center. It’s an introduction to the required schooling, a day-in-the-life of a geoscientist, and jobs.

* For another overview, read "Geoscientist" at ScienceBuddies.org.

* Link to 23 geoscientist profiles including an astrogeologist, a geophysicist, a hydrologist, a micropaleontologist, and an energy policy program manager.

* Watch the video, Careers for Geoscientists, about opportunities to work on the atmosphere, oceans, and the solid-Earth. Interviews reveal adventures and travels, outdoor work, and use of high tech instruments.

* Watch a video of geochemist Andrew Jacobson sharing how his path into geology took him to the Himalayas. The video is long (28 minutes) and a bit slow, but worth the time if you want to get a feel for life as a geology professional or as a college student.

* Watch a video of geochemist Frank Ramos. Beginning at 14 minutes, you can visit his lab and watch student researchers extract the interesting parts of rocks for analysis. Beginning at 20 minutes and especially from 23:30 to 29 minutes, see a simple explanation of how a mass spectrometer works (the same kind of machine that Jenny Middleton uses).

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* Read about the fascinating moment when an arts major turned into a geologist.

* Read about world-class expert seismologist Lucy Jones, "the Earthquake Lady" her work and career path, beginning at age eight.
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Updated on January 28, 2012

Follow a dentist – a STEM career glimpse

by Minh Tam Dang, DDS (Doctor of Dental Surgery)

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If you like taking care of people, as I do, you might love to be a dentist like me.

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I do a large variety of things at work, including saving teeth and smiles. Like the day a commotion in the waiting room drew me out of my office. Anguished voices talked at the same time.

“Oh, my!”

“He got banged in the mouth."

A teen was pressing a blood-stained tissue on his lips. His father leaned over the receptionist’s counter.

“He broke a tooth right in front.”

I took the wounded boy to the big chair. “Let me look.”

The dental assistant gently rinsed the blood away with a stream of water so I could see. “Only one tooth looks damaged.” It was a top tooth, one of the two middle ones, broken at a slant one third of the way up. “Let’s take an X-ray.”

The dental assistant led the boy to the X-ray cubicle while I walked to my desk to wait for the digital image to appear on my computer screen. I stared at the tooth all over—what was left of it—especially the root, the bone around it, and the middle of the tooth, or pulp chamber, containing the nerve. The break was far enough from the pulp chamber, so there was no need to empty it, then fill it with an artificial material (do a root canal treatment).

Dr. Dang reviewing an X-ray (but not the one in the story)

That was very good news. A live tooth is stronger and sturdier than a dead or fake tooth.

The plan, then, was to cap the broken tooth with a temporary crown and replace it with a permanent crown later.

A crown is hollow, somewhat like a pencil cup. Its outside shape must match the original tooth. Its inside shape must fit the broken tooth—after it’s been prepared by filing it down, to make room for the crown.

First I numbed the tooth and gum with pain killers (anesthetics), by rubbing a numbing gel on the gum, then giving an injection next to the tooth. After a few minutes, I made sure the patient couldn’t feel a thing by testing the gums all around the tooth.

Next, I pictured the prepared tooth in my mind and filed down as needed. The taper and smoothness were very important for the finished product to look good, with no visible line where the crown would meet the natural tooth, just under the gum line. It was like carving a miniature sculpture, except it would not sit in a glass case untouched--it would chomp on food, many times a day for years to come. It would also be seen every time this young man smiled.

I took a mold (impression) of the prepared tooth. I filled a special, small “tray” with a special, soft paste. I squirted softer paste on the tooth to capture the finest details of the edges, so the crown would fit perfectly.

I put the tray in place and asked the patient to bite down. Minutes later, the paste had hardened (set). I took the tray out, sprayed it with disinfectant, and bagged it.

To order the crown, I wrote up the lab slip and asked the lab to make it of porcelain (not porcelain fused to metal or gold). I specified the color closest to that of the other teeth. I held a color chart next to the patient’s teeth and he helped pick the shade.

The lab courier, who comes by every day, picked up the bag and slip. It would take the lab roughly two weeks to make the crown.

Meanwhile, the patient needed a temporary crown. The dental assistant made it, because no pre-made, stock acrylic crown was quite right. She glued it on with temporary cement.

The patient walked out smiling and having silly fun with the numbness, which would disappear within a few hours.

Every team member had to do excellent work to get fine details just right.

As the dentist, I had to prepare the tooth so it would be just the right size and shape. It couldn’t be too thin or it would break. It couldn’t be too thick or else it’s the crown that would be too thin. The filing-down couldn’t come too close to the nerve or the tooth would be sensitive and hurt all the time. The mold could not be distorted, or the crown wouldn’t be the right shape inside and it wouldn’t fit.

The dental assistant faced many similar challenges when putting together a temporary crown.

The lab people used the mold to make a plaster model of the prepared tooth and neighboring teeth, then made a permanent crown on the model. When this crown was ready, it was tried on and final adjustments were made for a perfect fit, before it was cemented in place.

Crowns can last a long time (if their owners take care of their mouths, by brushing twice a day, flossing once a day and seeing a dentist every six months) and that’s something to smile about!

ABOUT MINH TAM DANG

When Tam is not working, she loves arranging flowers, gardening, playing with her two cats (Diddi, also known as “The D,” and Louie), painting with watercolors, quilting, reading and writing Vietnamese poetry, and playing tennis, hiking or riding bikes with family.

LINKS

● Watch this short video overview of dentist careers.

● For a little longer overview of dentist careers, click on “Listen to the podcast…” at the Sloan Career Cornerstone Center. It’s an introduction to the required schooling, a day-in-the-life of a dentist, salary info, specialties, and the great job market in the years ahead.

● For dentist interviews, click on the names below.

Jennifer Cyriaque

James Tynecki

Stephen Sterlitz

● Watch this 25-minute award-winning career video about “Women in Dental Research.” After a brief history of dentistry, it follows three amazing women. One fought the AIDS epidemic, the second one, a molecular researcher, studies oral disease and cancer, and the third one leads researchers who provide free dental care to children.

Women Life Scientists Rock

Watch 25-minute award-winning career videos showcasing successful women scientists. Each video follows three amazing women with various backgrounds who discuss the rewards and challenges of their careers and their unique pathways to success.

● Women in Dental Research

● Women Scientists with Disabilities

● Women Are Pathologists

● Women Are Researchers

● Women Are Surgeons

Follow a hospital dietitian – a STEM career glimpse

by Mary Ann Dames, M.S., R.D. (Master of Science, Registered Dietitian)







Self-portrait by Mary Ann Dames




If you like imagining what you could do with food, you might love to be the kind of dietitian I am.

Planning and preparing food has such a powerful impact on our health and energy, it’s a science called dietetics. The professionals in this field are called dietitians or nutritionists. They work for schools, sports teams, companies with food services for employees, and hospitals, to name only a few.
As a hospital dietitian for many years, my job included teaching patients how to make changes in diet in order to improve their health. I also created clever nutrition programs for patients with special dietary needs.

Patients who arrive at the hospital suddenly lose control of their lives. A caring health team takes over. Doctors decide how to treat them. Nurses give them instructions. Others dictate their daily schedule.

Many patients are scared. Most are stressed. Some take it out on something. Guess what they pick on?

You got it—hospital food. It isn’t like what they’re used to. Maybe they don’t eat American food at home. Or they are on a restricted diet. Or the food tastes funny due to the aftereffects of anesthesia or medication.

And I got to hear all about it when I walked in their rooms to do one special part of my job: diet education. Patients who complain aren’t being mean—they want some control back.

I remember a man (I’ll call him Mr. Doe) whose wife paced around or hovered while I tried to give him advice. I was actually glad she was there so that she could hear it too.

I needed to talk Mr. Doe into drinking less alcohol, eating healthier foods, and exercising more. But the first thing he said was, “When I go home, I want to go back to normal.” And he really wanted his two nightly beers.

Mrs. Doe declared that he was going to follow his new diet. She started doing the one thing that wasn’t going to work: nagging him. I said to her, “Although you love him very much, you can’t make him change.” What she could do was to shop wisely to make the appropriate foods available. Then, whatever Mr. Doe ate or drank would be up to him, even if it broke her heart.

When he saw how upset his wife was, his face softened. And when I gave him back some control, he almost smiled.

I said to him, “You don’t need to change your whole diet overnight. Maybe you can think about making one small change.”

He nodded.

Then I told both of them, “It’s a learning process. One step at time—one food at a time, one change in exercise—would be fine.”

And just in case he’d be ready to make one more change, maybe in a week or in a month, I gave them handouts and went over them.

By the time I left his room, Mr. Doe had decided to cut back to one beer a night. He and his wife were reading the handouts and planning what to do as a team.









He was in charge again.



As a dietitian, many days people skills are even more important than scientific knowledge. All the science courses I took help me understand what is happening physically to my patients. But what it comes down to is finding a way to inspire one patient at a time to make one change at a time.

Now that I’m retired, I am fulfilling a dream. I’m giving back to the world through a blog, “Reading, Writing, and Recipes”. If children can learn about food, nutrition, and cooking through my blog and elsewhere, maybe they won’t grow up to be like Mr. Doe, because they will have been leading a healthy lifestyle all along.











Mary Ann Dames, M.S., R.D.

LINKS

● For a quick-and-easy overview of dietitian and nutritionist careers, click on “Listen to the podcast…” at the Sloan Career Cornerstone Center. It’s an introduction to the required schooling, a day-in-the-life of a dietitian, salary info, where dietitians work, and the favorable job market in the years ahead.

● For another friendly overview, read "Science Careers: Dietitian or Nutritionist" at ScienceBuddies.org.

● For examples of dietitians’ jobs, from personal chef for a movie star to policy-maker in Washington, watch the American Dietetic Association video.

● Read an interview of a dietitian and nutritionist (why she chose her career, her workday, what she likes best and least about work, career goals, hobbies).

● For current trends from the point of view of another dietitian, read the article, “Hospital dietitian's job more than just playing with food.”

● See Robin, a registered dietitian, talk about her job as a pharmaceutical sales representative or "drug rep" in a 5-minute video interview about a typical day, job requirements, and the best and worst parts of the job.

● If you are a teen, and you want to get the most energy out of what you put in your body, this nutrition guide for students and athletes is for you!

Updated August 6, 2011

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