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Women in the Chemical Workforce: A Workshop Report to the Chemical Sciences Roundtable (2000)

Chapter: Appendix B: Biographical Sketches of Workshop Speakers

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Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Biographical Sketches of Workshop Speakers." National Research Council. 2000. Women in the Chemical Workforce: A Workshop Report to the Chemical Sciences Roundtable. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10047.
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Appendix B

Biographical Sketches of Workshop Speakers

Arthur Bienenstock is associate director for science of the Office and Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), the White House office that has responsibility for ensuring that the United States continues to maintain global leadership in science, mathematics, and engineering research and that science continues to provide support for the successful resolution of important problems in the areas of health, agriculture, the economy, energy, social well-being, education, and national security. Its science division concentrates on policy and interagency coordination directly related to the health of U.S. basic science, as well as on other policy matters that can be informed by basic science. Dr. Bienenstock received B.S. (1955) and M.S. (1957) degrees from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1962. In addition, he was a recipient of a Ph.D. (honorary) from Polytechnic University in 1997. He is the first recipient of the Pittsburgh Diffraction Society's Sidhu Award for his work in x-ray diffraction and crystallography. He is also a fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

At OSTP, Dr. Bienenstock has sought to gain general recognition of the interdependencies of the sciences and the need for the country to maintain broad scientific and technological strength. He has also focused on ensuring that the United States has a scientific and technological workforce, at all levels, that meets the nation's 21st century needs. Mindful of anticipated demographic changes, he initiated an interagency working group that is seeking to increase the participation of minorities, women, and the disabled in science and technology. He has led a task force on the government-university research partnership aimed at strengthening the relationship and has championed an interagency educational research initiative to fund large-scale, interdisciplinary research on teaching and learning.

L. Shannon Davis is the director of Industrial Products Technology at Solutia, Inc., a specialty chemicals company. She received her B.S. from Georgia Southern College and her Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry from the University of Florida. She began her career in 1988 at Monsanto's Pensacola, Florida, site as a senior chemist in the nylon intermediates business unit, where she worked on processes for the

Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Biographical Sketches of Workshop Speakers." National Research Council. 2000. Women in the Chemical Workforce: A Workshop Report to the Chemical Sciences Roundtable. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10047.
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manufacture of adipic acid and hexamethylenediamine and to increase the value of coproduct streams from these processes and had responsibility for the on-site chemical pilot plant facility. In 1994, she was promoted to manager, product technology, in the Saflex business and moved to Springfield, Massachusetts, where she created and participated in a leadership team focusing on product and process improvements. After 21/2 years in Saflex, she returned to Pensacola as the manager of an R&D group responsible for technology supporting the carpet business. In 1997, Dr. Davis moved to her current position at corporate headquarters in St. Louis, Missouri. Her responsibilities include growth programs and existing technologies for heat transfer fluids, aviation fluids, metalworking fluids, and L-aspartic acid.

Nancy H. Hopkins is the Amgen, Inc., Professor of Molecular and Development Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She obtained a B.A. from Radcliffe College in 1964 and a Ph.D. from the Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry at Harvard University in 1971. Her Ph.D. thesis, carried out in the laboratory of Mark Ptashne, dealt with gene expression in the bacterial virus lambda. Her postdoctoral research, under James D. Watson at Harvard and at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, involved DNA tumor viruses. In 1973, she joined the MIT faculty as an assistant professor in the Center for Cancer Research, within the Biology Department, where she worked on mechanisms of replication and leukemogenesis by RNA tumor viruses for 17 years. She was promoted to associate professor in 1976, tenured in 1979, and promoted to professor in 1982. Nine years ago, Dr. Hopkins switched fields to work in developmental biology. Her laboratory first developed techniques for making transgenic zebrafish and is now using these techniques to isolate a significant fraction of the genes required for the normal development of the zebrafish embryo.

Dr. Hopkins is the author of numerous scientific papers in the fields of bacterial and animal viruses and in developmental biology, and she wrote, with four others, the fourth edition of the textbook The Molecular Biology of the Gene. She codeveloped and taught the first freshman biology course required of all MIT undergraduates, for which she was named a Class of 1960 Fellow. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS) and a member of the Institute of Medicine. In 1995 she was appointed chair of the first Committee on Women Faculty in the School of Science at MIT.

Debra R. Rolison is head of Advanced Electrochemical Materials at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL). She received a B.S. in chemistry from Florida Atlantic University in 1975 and a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1980 under the direction of Royce W. Murray. Dr. Rolison joined the Naval Research Laboratory as a research chemist in 1980. Her research at NRL focuses on the influence of nanoscale domains on electron- and charge-transfer reactions, with special emphasis on the surface and materials science of aerogels, electrocatalysts, and zeolites. Her program creates new nanostructured materials and composites for catalytic chemistries, energy storage and conversion (fuel cells, supercapacitors, batteries, thermoelectric devices), and sensors.

Dr. Rolison is a member of the American Chemical Society, AAAS, the International Zeolite Association, the Materials Research Society, and the Society for Electroanalytical Chemistry (SEAC). She wrote Ultramicroelectrodes, the first textbook in this very active research area of electrochemistry, with Martin Fleischmann, Stanley Pons, and Peter Schmidt. She and Henry White guest-edited an issue of Langmuir devoted to the electrochemistry of nanostructured materials (February 1999). Dr. Rolison was a member of the Advisory Board for Analytical Chemistry and is a current member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry and Langmuir. She is a member of the Board of Directors for the SEAC and has served since 1997 as editor of the society's newsletter, SEAC Communications.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Biographical Sketches of Workshop Speakers." National Research Council. 2000. Women in the Chemical Workforce: A Workshop Report to the Chemical Sciences Roundtable. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10047.
×

Margaret W. Rossiter is the Marie Underhill Noll Professor of the History of Science at Cornell University. She is the editor of the two official journals of the History of Science Society, the quarterly Isis and the annual Osiris, and the author of three award-winning books: Justus Liebig and the Americans: The Emergence of Agricultural Science (Yale University Press, 1975); Women Scientists in America: Struggles and Strategies to 1940 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982); and Women Scientists in America: Before Affirmative Action, 1940-1972 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995). She has also edited or coedited three other volumes.

Dr. Rossiter received her Ph.D. from Yale University School of Medicine in the history of medicine and science. She has held a number of fellowships, including a Guggenheim, a Rockefeller, and—from 1989 to 1994—a MacArthur, and has been honored with numerous teaching and research awards, including the 1997 Pfizer Prize and the History of Science Society award for the best book in English on the history of science for the previous 3 years. In the early 1980s she was on the first NSF Director's Advisory Committee on Equal Opportunities in Science and Technology and also served as program director for NSF's program in the history and philosophy of science. In 1996 and 1997 she was a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study, where she worked on the history of science in the United States.

Kathleen E. Sendall is vice president of Western Canada Development and Operations at PetroCanada. She is responsible for the Western Canada natural gas business and conventional oil properties, including technology and marketing functions that support the business. Ms. Sendall graduated from Queen's University, Kingston, with a B.Sc., honours, in mechanical engineering in 1977 and from the Western Executive Program of the University of Western Ontario Business School in 1990. Ms. Sendall joined Petro-Canada in 1978 after 2 years as an engineering supervisor of offshore and international joint ventures at Nova Gas Transmission. Ms. Sendall held various supervisory positions until 1991, when she was appointed wholesale marketing manager for Petro-Canada Products. In 1994, she served as manager and, later, director of business development in the Natural Gas Liquids business unit. She was appointed to her current position in 1996.

Ms. Sendall chairs the Advisory Council to the NSERC/Petro-Canada Chair for the Advancement of Women in Science and Engineering, Prairie Region. She is also a director of Junior Achievement of Southern Alberta and the Canadian Engineering Memorial Foundation of Calgary. She is a member of the Association of Professional Engineers, Geologists and Geophysicists of Alberta. In 1998, Ms. Sendall was the recipient of the YWCA Women of Distinction Award for the category “Business, Labour, the Professions and Entrepreneurs” and in 1999 became a fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering.

Virginia Valian has served as professor of psychology at Hunter College-CUNY since 1987. She has also held the position of director of the Hunter College master's program in psychology since 1991. She received her M.A. (1968) and Ph.D. (1971) in psychology from Northeastern University and her B.A. from the University of Michigan in 1963. She has held a variety of visiting faculty positions at universities in the United States and abroad, including Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (Paris), the University of Rochester, Wellesley College, Fudan University (Shanghai), Columbia University, and Mount Holyoke College.

Dr. Valian's research interests include first and second language acquisition, artificial language learning, and human sex differences. She is a member of the American Psychological Association, the American Psychological Society, and the Society for Research in Child Development. She serves as a member of the editorial board for Cognition. She has written and lectured widely and has received considerable acclaim for her 1998 book Why So Slow? The Advancement of Women.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Biographical Sketches of Workshop Speakers." National Research Council. 2000. Women in the Chemical Workforce: A Workshop Report to the Chemical Sciences Roundtable. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10047.
×
Page 140
Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Biographical Sketches of Workshop Speakers." National Research Council. 2000. Women in the Chemical Workforce: A Workshop Report to the Chemical Sciences Roundtable. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10047.
×
Page 141
Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Biographical Sketches of Workshop Speakers." National Research Council. 2000. Women in the Chemical Workforce: A Workshop Report to the Chemical Sciences Roundtable. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10047.
×
Page 142
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For a period of history no women worked outside the home. Bust as years have gone by and society has changed, Women are working varying jobs every day. They are, however, underrepresented in some sectors of jobs. This includes women in the engineering and science fields. To matters worse, women do not ascend the career ladder as fast as or as far as men do.

The impact of this and related problems for science, the academic enterprise, the U.S. economy, and global economic competitiveness have been recently examined. The Chemical Sciences Roundtable evaluate that the demographics of the workforce and the implications for science and society vary, depending on the field of science or engineering. The roundtable has organized a workshop, "Women in the Chemical Workforce," to address issues pertinent to the chemical and chemical engineering workforce as a whole, with an emphasis on the advancement of women.

Women in the Chemical Workforce: A Workshop Report to the Chemical Sciences Roundtable includes reports regarding the workshop's three sessions—Context and Overview, Opportunities for Change, and Conditions for Success—as well as presentations by invited speakers, discussions within breakout groups, oral reports from each group.

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