‘Want More Women In STEM? Inspire Them Early.’

We decide on our careers long before we ever step foot in our workplace. We take cues from our family and dramatized media depictions of professionals who often look and act nothing like their real-life counterparts.  

Therefore, to solve the gender inequality in technical roles, we need to kickstart our efforts in college or even high school – when students are open-minded, and there is still time to make real change. Because later in life, for every dollar men earn – women earn 81 cents.

One woman trailblazing change is Professor Daniela Rus, the first woman director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Computer Science Artificial Intelligence Lab, or MIT CSAIL for short. Rus (who also started Dartmouth College’s Robotics Research Department), along with Professor Anna Baldycheva and Kate Berseneva from the STEMM Laboratories of the University of Exeter and co-founders of the STEMM Global Scientific Community, and Sophia Schteiner, head of partnerships, marketing and media relations of the STEMM Global Community, will host the first annual STEMM MIT CSAIL AI in Healthcare Summit. 2020’s summit on October 1-2. This summit will be entirely virtual and attract an international audience.

Unique to this summit is its combination of business and academia. After all, to make impactful change in the real world, we need the involvement and participation of both industry leaders as well as the brightest minds from academia. Together, Rus, Baldycheva, Berseneva and Schteiner have always been driven by this goal.

To understand what motivates these women to create and grow this global initiative, we’ll explore their personal journeys. In high school, Rus enjoyed both math and physics. She said, “As the math we learned in school became more abstract, I realized that I wanted to do something related to STEM, yes, but also something with a physical component.” Summit co-organizers Baldycheva, Berseneva and Schteiner had similar experiences. Baldycheva and Berseneva grew up with several generations of engineers and physicists in their families, with their parents openly discussing science, math, and programming around them. Their parents’ influence had a profound impact on their professional ambitions, which led Baldycheva to establish her own research laboratory at the University of Exeter at the age of 28. And Schteiner, the serial entrepreneur, honed her scientific journalism skills by writing about her father’s geological discoveries, which led to her building her own PR firm, Schteiner PR, at the age of 22. 

College years are our formative years, and it was when our Summit Organizers found their professional calling. As an undergraduate, Daniela was inspired to pursue robotics after attending a lecture by her PhD advisor, John Hopcroft, who notably stated, “many of the classical problems in computer science have been solved, and now is the time for grand applications in computing, such as robotics.” Daneila joined Cornell University to work with Hopcroft on the mathematical foundations of robotics. 

At Cornell, Hopcroft asked Rus to build a robot system to make and fetch coffee. Unfortunately, the only robot available was a huge Puma industrial robot. It lacked the body structure and the control agility to complete this task. Undeterred, Rus developed complex robotics algorithms and fine manipulation planning for dexterous manipulation. Rus enjoyed overcoming this challenge and set herself upon a new one: adapting her coffee algorithm to instruct robots to move furniture. And the cherry on top was when Rus programmed the old Puma robot arm to cut her colleague (Bruce Donald’s) birthday cake for a surprise birthday demonstration! Rus’ passion and dedication to robotics grew through this collection of experiences.

Similarly, the STEMM Global team found their inspiration through mentors or professors who encouraged them to pursue STEM. Anna Baldycheva is an Associate Professor of Electronic Engineering at the University of Exeter in the UK; Kate Berseneva is the Head of the STEMM AI Lab at Exeter; and Sophia Schteiner is the marketing and PR powerhouse of the team. Kate recalls seeing the wall of honor at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Washington, D.C., where she interned as a PhD student on theoretical physics, and telling herself that she “wanted to see more women among those brightest minds one day.” 

Anna, the Professor in Electronic Engineering, says that “first year undergraduate students in engineering instinctively expect their engineering professor to be a serious, middle-aged male.” This inspired her to challenge that stereotype by becoming a successful young female engineering professor who can inspire a diverse next generation of engineers. Kate adds, “upon graduation, female engineers are sometimes considered by employers to be less professional than their male colleagues. The more girls trust in themselves to enter this challenging field, the more this narrow-minded historical precedent will become a thing of the past.”

“Today, telepresence gives students greater access to tutors and teachers, while doctors treat patients thousands of miles away,” Rus says. “Robots help with packing on factory floors, networked sensors enable monitoring of facilities, and 3D-printing creates customized goods. These possibilities will only grow as we imagine what we can accomplish with advances in artificial intelligence and robotics.”

Rus describes her role at MIT as “living her dream,” where she’s building robots that bring together the world of computation and the physical world of mechanisms and materials. 

While she had supportive mentors during her career, Rus realizes that our progress towards diversity cannot stop. “We need all the talent, creativity, and diversity of experiences that women bring to the table, whether we’re pursuing the future of algorithms, tailoring hardware to machine learning, or imagining the future of industries from fashion to food to retail to manufacturing,” says Rus. 

Rus notes that if you value innovation and new ideas—as these fields should and must—diversity is crucial: it encourages people to anticipate different perspectives and work harder to reach a consensus, which results in better outcomes. 

Still, a focus on diversity alone isn’t enough. Women still struggle to get the same opportunities for equal pay and career advancement as their male counterparts. “Many women feel excluded by a sexist work culture. And only a few recognize the stark lack of women in senior leadership roles in most technology organizations,” says Rus.

To achieve a world where possibilities and advancements in robotics and STEM are available to all who seek it, Rus says, “We need to educate all students – male and female – equally on the opportunities available in these fields, give them the chance to shine, by creating inclusive environments for them to work in. As I like to put it, computational thinking and computational making should be part of literacy in the 21st century.”

“When we ask our students what they want to be in their careers, I want to hear young women and men alike saying things like astronauts, climatologists, neuroscientists, roboticists, and computer scientists.”

Anna and Kate echo similar sentiments: “Women tend to choose not to study engineering.The more girls trust in themselves to enter this challenging field, the more this narrow-minded historical precedent will become a thing of the past.”

Therefore, it’s up to us: researchers, professors, students, entrepreneurs, business leaders, Forbes readers, or no matter who you are, to create a truly inclusive environment where everyone feels part of the whole. When that becomes a reality, we’ll focus on what to achieve next rather than who is in the room. 

And this is at the crux of the upcoming STEMM MIT CSAIL AI in Healthcare Summit: leveraging the collective intelligence in computing, science, engineering, and technology to ensure that the outcomes benefit the greater good. Through the Summit, STEMM’s Anna, Kate, and Sophia, along with MIT’s Rus galvanize AI experts to action amid the current healthcare crisis. 

Join us for the Summit. And until then, if you’re in STEM, reach out and make a connection with a young person. If you’re a young person, find out more about the story of a teacher in the STEM field. It might just change your life.