1. BWIS Talk

   "Marie Curie's Life and Work"

   Edward Sierra, Brookhaven National Laboratory

   Thursday, March 29, 2018, 4 pm
   Large Seminar Room, Bldg. 510

   In celebration of Women's History Month, Edward Sierra, of Brookhaven National Laboratory's Quality Management Office, will speak on "Marie Curie's Life and Work." November 2017, marked the 150-year anniversary of Marie Curie's birth. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize and the first person and only woman to win twice. She is still the only person awarded a Nobel Prize in two different sciences: the Physics Prize in 1903 that she shared with her husband Pierre Curie and Antoine Henri Becquerel, for their work on radioactivity, and the Chemistry Prize in 1911 for the discovery of polonium and radium. Sierra, the regulatory compliance and reporting officer for the Lab, is also President of the Long Island section of the American Nuclear Society. Cookies and coffee at 3:45 p.m.
2. BWIS Lecture

   "Marie Curie's Life and Work — CANCELED — To be Rescheduled"

   Presented by Edward Sierra, BNL Quality Management Office

   Thursday, March 22, 2018, 4 pm
   Large Seminar Room, Bldg. 510

   Edward Sierra will provide a talk on Marie Curie, an extraordinary scientist, the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, and still the only one awarded with two Nobel Prizes. Ed's interest in the early pioneers of radioactivity was piqued by the discussions he had many years ago with the renowned Dr. Maurice Goldhaber, the prominent physicist and a former Laboratory Director at Brookhaven National Laboratory. He learned that Goldhaber was a student under Sir James Chadwick at the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University and that he attended a graduate course in Berlin given by Dr. Lise Meitner. Ed's research on Meitner led to an interest in Marie Curie. Her work and life is the topic of this talk.
3. Symposium

   "Girl Power in STEM: Press for Progress' Symposium at SBU"

   Saturday, March 3, 2018, 8:30 am
   Stony Brook University

   The Girl Power in STEM: Press for Progress! symposium at Stony Brook University (SBU) on March 3, co-sponsored by Brookhaven Women in Science (BWIS), will celebrate the accomplishment of women in the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) fields. Lecturers and panelists, including many from Brookhaven Lab, will discuss the impact of women in STEM careers, on the work environment, and on the economy, and how society can improve women's participation in STEM fields. The event marks International Women's Day, proclaimed by the United Nations (UN) as a day to champion women's rights. This year the UN celebrates taking action to promote equal opportunities at all levels and to help forge a more gender inclusive world.
4. BWIS Lecture

   "Where Electrical Engineering Meets Biology"

   Bingxin Shen, Temple University

   Thursday, January 25, 2018, 4:30 pm
   Large Seminar Room, Bldg. 510

   Bingxin Shen, Assistant Professor of Computer & Information Sciences at Temple University, and who earned her Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stony Brook University, will speak on "Where Electrical Engineering Meets Biology." Dr. Shen's research in signal processing lead her to work with 2017 Nobel Laureate Joachim Frank on the determination of the structure of the Ribosome by electron microscopy. Ribosomes are the protein builders, like construction workers who connect one amino acid at a time, building them into long chains. Ribosomes are special because they are found in all living cells. Dr. Shen uses her knowledge of signal processing to study changes in the protein composition synthesized by the ribosome submitted to stress. She has been a mentor, advisor and lecturer as a member of Stony Brook University's Women in Science and Engineering (WISE).
5. Brookhaven Women In Science Lecture

   "How a Farm Girl Became a Scientist and Impacted Patients' Lives"

   Presented by Dr. Cathy Cutler, Director, Medical Isotope Research & Production Program, Brookhaven National Lab

   Thursday, November 30, 2017, 4 pm
   Large Seminar Room, Bldg. 510

   Dr. Cutler will talk about her path from rural farm girl to the Director of the Medical Isotope Research & Production Program at Brookhaven Lab where her current work is focused on facilitating the development of new radiopharmaceuticals to enhance personalized treatments of metastatic cancer. Cathy's research has focused on developing improved isotope production methods and enhanced delivery methods to increase the dose to the tumor site and mitigate normal tissue toxicity. Her research eventually brought her to the Lab and its unique facilities that can be used to produce radioisotopes with nuclear properties that can deliver higher dose to tumors and less toxicity to normal tissues. The typical radiopharmaceutical works by combining a radioactive isotope with a specially designed organic molecule or a biological targeting molecule. Once inside the body, the targeting compound takes control, guiding the isotope to the cancerous site where the isotope decays, enabling either diagnosis or ablation of the cell. The challenge particularly in therapy is ensuring enough dose to the tumor cells to cause destruction before the effects on normal cells and toxicity becomes too high. Coffee and cookies at 4:00 p.m.This event is open to the public.
6. BWIS Speaker Event: Amazing Women and How They Got the Vote

   "BWIS Lecture"

   Thursday, October 26, 2017, 4 pm
   Large Seminar Room, Bldg. 510

   Celebrate the centennial of women's suffrage in New York State. This presentation will include vintage photographs and discussions of various aspects of the movement, focusing on the involvement of Long Island women. Presented by the American Association of University Women (AAUW) Islip Area Branch, the talk features stories of courageous and militant suffragists and their political activism, as well as the activities of the anti-suffragists.
7. BWIS General Meeting

   Wednesday, September 13, 2017, 12 pm
   Berkner Hall, Room C

   Come meet the FY2017 BWIS Executive Board to voice your concerns, learn about our future events and volunteer opportunities. We hope to see you there and bring a friend! Brookhaven Women in Science is a diverse and inclusive community that promotes equal opportunity and advancement for all women in support of world-class science. BWIS is a volunteer-run 501(c)(3) non-profit funded by BSA and membership dues. If you have any questions, please email agoldberg@bnl.gov.
8. Brookhaven Women In Science Lecture

   "Renate W. Chasman Awards"

   Wednesday, August 2, 2017, 11:30 am
   Large Seminar Room, Bldg. 510

   Please join us as we award the Chasman Scholarship to Tiffany Victor, Stony Brook University, and Hannah Herde, Brandeis University. Both awardees will give a talk. Lunch will be provided. Sponsored by Brookhaven Women in Science.
9. BWIS Sponsored Event

   "What Makes Humans Special?: Insights from Non-Human Primates"

   Presented by Dr. Laurie Santos, Department of Psychology, Yale University

   Thursday, July 13, 2017, 4:30 pm
   Large Seminar Room, Bldg. 510

   Why are humans the only species that reads fiction, tells jokes, and shares photos on Instagram? In this talk, I will explore this question of human uniqueness by examining what makes the human mind so different from that of other animals. I will first discuss recent work in comparative cognition that shows a number of ways that other animals are strikingly similar to humans in the way they think about the world. I will also explore some key cognitive differences between humans and other animals that make the human species different from other animals but also a bit less rational than you might expect.
10. Brookhaven Women In Science Lecture

    "Goldhaber Prize 2017 Announcement & Talk"

    Anna Gura, Stony Brook University

    Thursday, June 29, 2017, 12 pm
    Large Seminar Room, Bldg. 510

    Title of Talk: Local modulation of carrier density in graphene-ferroelectric field effect transistors through flexoelectric switching Anna is a PhD candidate working under the advisement of Dr. Matthew Dawber in the Artificially Layered Ferroelectric Oxides group at Stony Brook University (SBU). Her PhD thesis work focuses on the use of a ferroelectric (FE) material to harness the electric functionalities of graphene (Gr) by engineering Gr-FE Field Effect Transistors. In these devices, the underlying FE superlattice layer is used to control the charge state of the Gr channel. This work deals with various aspects of growth, fabrication and characterization of thin films, superlattices, and nano-scale devices.
11. Brookhaven Women In Science Lecture

    "Better Wine With X-Rays"

    Christine Stockert, University of California, Davis

    Thursday, June 15, 2017, 4:30 pm
    Hamilton Seminar Room, Bldg. 555

    Vine infection by viruses can significantly affect wine production and shorten the lifetime of the vineyard. One newly discovered virus called "Red Blotch Disease" has a set of symptoms that begin to appear in late August in California red wine varieties. Irregular red blotches, red veins and necrosis can appear on the basal leaves of shoots and these symptoms mimic phosphorus, potassium or magnesium deficiency. The fruit of these vines do not fully mature in a timely manner, especially in sugar and acidity, resulting in wines with reduced fruit character and a thinner mouth feel. There is no cure and the recommendation is to replant, a costly solution. To mitigate the economic impact, Stockert has been using X-rays to develop methods that might aid plant metabolism by supplementing a specific nutrient to prolong the life of the vineyard. The first in her family to earn a College degree, Stockert has been investigating for more than 17 years grapevines and wine fermentation dynamics. Cookies at 4:00 p.m.
12. Brookhaven Women In Science Lecture

    "Self-Organization and Understanding"

    Presented by Natika Newton, Ph.D., Nassau Community College

    Thursday, May 18, 2017, 4 pm
    Hamilton Seminar Room, Bldg. 555

    This talk has three parts: 1. I discuss the phenomenon of understanding – our ordinary experience of understanding the objects and events in our environment. Normally we do not pay attention to the understanding process itself, but just to what is understood (e.g. I understand the ordinary things you say, but do not enquire how it is that I understand them); here we focus upon the process. I argue that understanding holds an important key to the nature of human cognition—our ability to think and reason. 2. Next I examine the process of self-organization – the process whereby a type of general order arises from local interactions between parts of an originally chaotic system. Self-organization is so-called because the order is not controlled by any agent external to the system. Many familiar phenomena are self-organized, from rush-hour traffic patterns to ant hills, as well as many organic processes within our bodies. 3. Finally, I attempt to show that understanding is a self-organizing process. In considering cognitive functions in the brain, I take a top-down rather than a bottom-up approach. A top-down approach starts with a general system, in this case our conscious awareness of understanding, and breaks it down into (sometimes unconscious) subsystems. I argue that the sort of understanding we are familiar with is possible only through the self-organized subsystems of our ordinary understanding of our situation and environment.
13. BWIS Sponsored Event

    "Monthly BWIS Executive Board Meeting"

    Wednesday, May 10, 2017, 12 pm
    Hamilton Seminar Room, Bldg. 555

    Come meet the FY2017 BWIS Executive Board to voice your concerns, learn about our future events and volunteer opportunities. We hope to see you there and bring a friend! Brookhaven Women in Science is a diverse community that promotes equal opportunity and advancement for all women in support of world-class science. BWIS is a volunteer-run non-profit funded by BSA and membership fees. If you have any questions, please email agoldberg@bnl.gov.
14. Brookhaven Women in Science (BWIS) Lecture

    "What Women in STEM Can Learn from Polymeric Hydrogels"

    Presented by Surita Bhatia, Stony Brook University

    Tuesday, April 25, 2017, 4 pm
    Hamilton Seminar Room, Bldg. 555

    The ability to create synthetic materials that mimic the structural and mechanical properties of native tissues, like skin and fibrous tissues, is crucial for many biomaterials applications. Unfortunately, design of such materials remains a significant challenge. Many native tissues and synthetic soft biomaterials are comprised of polymer networks. What are the minimum properties that must be build into a synthetic polymer network in order to reproduce the properties of native tissues? Dr. Bhatia will discuss this issue, while drawing parallels between lessons learned from design of soft materials and challenges faced by women in science and engineering fields.

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