Embracing Diversity in STEM
TimeProgramme
09:00 - 09:15Opening
09:15 - 10:00Keynote - Prof. Anna Danielsson
10:00 - 10:30Science Talk 1 - Dr. Shantanu Dave
10:30 - 11:00Coffee Break
11:00 - 11:30Science Talk 2 - Prof. Mathea Sophia Galanski
11:30 - 12:00Science Talk 3 - Prof. Nergis Mavalvala
12:00 - 12:30Science Talk 4 - Prof. Chi Zhang
12:30 - 13:30Lunch Break
13:30 - 15:00Panel discussion
15:00 - 15:30Coffee Break
15:30 - 16:45Science Slam
16:45 - 17:00Closing remarks

Keynote

Anna Danielsson is a professor of Science Education at the Department of Teaching and Learning and head of the science education section at the University of Stockholm. Her research interests are centred around issues related to gender, identity and power in the context of teaching and learning science and technology. Anna Danielsson holds a PhD in physics, specialising in physics education research from Uppsala University (2009). After a two-year postdoc at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, she 2012 returned to Uppsala University to take up a position as senior lecturer at the Department of Education. During the academic year of 2016/17, she held a post as Reader in Science Education at King's College London. In January 2018, she was promoted to Professor in Curriculum Studies (didactic) at Uppsala University.

Science Talk 1

Dr. Shantanu Dave is a researcher at the Faculty of Mathematics of the University of Vienna, where he focuses on global analysis of elliptic and hypoelliptic operators arising from geometries and geometry of filtered manifolds. He grew up in India, where he studied at IIT Bombay. He then obtained his PhD in mathematics from Pennsylvania State University. From 2012 to 2017, he led several research projects at the Wolfgang Pauli Institute in Vienna and later joined the University of Vienna as a senior researcher in 2017. Dr. Dave has been visually handicapped most of his life and is legally blind. He is a strong advocate for e-math accessibility and is therefore interested in improving the availability of STEM literature for people with reduced eyesight by exploring different tools and techniques.

Science Talk 2

Mathea Galanski is an Associate Professor at the Department of Inorganic Chemistry of the University of Vienna.  She studied chemistry at the University of Heidelberg and received a doctorate in chemistry in 1996 from the same university. Moreover, she is deputy head of the NMR Centre, a core facility of the Faculty of Chemistry and a member of the Vienna Doctoral School in Chemistry. She has (co)authored more than 160 publications in the field of bioinorganic chemistry with a focus on the development of platinum-based anticancer drugs, and she acts as a reviewer for an editorial board member of several journals. Prof. Mathea Galanski is an openly transgender scientist who transitioned in parallel to the COVID-19 pandemic. She is the LGBTIQ+ representative at WoChem - Women in Chemistry, trying to build a platform for an inclusive, respectful, and supportive environment at the Faculty of Chemistry.

Science Talk 3

Prof. Nergis Mavalvala, Marble Professor of Astrophysics at MIT, is a Pakistani physicist focused on detecting gravitational waves and quantum measurement science. She was born in Karachi, Pakistan then moved to the United States to obtain a BA from Wellesley College and a PhD from MIT. She was a postdoctoral fellow and research scientist at the California Institute of Technology before joining the  Physics faculty at MIT in 2002. She was appointed Associate Department Head of Physics in February 2015, overseeing the department’s academic programming and student well-being for the next five years. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America in 2017. In 2020, she was named Dean of MIT’s School of Science. Prof. Mavalvala is openly queer, an immigrant academician, and a mother of two.

Science Talk 4

Professor Chi Zhang is a hydrogeophysicist at the Institute for Meteorology and Geophysics of the University of Vienna. Her research interests lie in understanding the tightly coupled physical, chemical, and biological processes that govern the behavior of geologic media and their constituent fluids (water, brine, CO2, and hydrocarbons) from the micro- to macro-scale. Prof. Zhang studied in China, where she received her B.A in Environmental Science from Sun Yat-Sen University. She then obtained her PhD in Geophysics from Rutgers University in 2012 and continued her academic path by holding postdoctoral positions at the Idaho National Laboratory, Colorado School of Mines, and Rutgers University. Before joining the University of Vienna as a tenure-track assistant professor and group leader of Environmental Geophysics, Dr. Zhang was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geology at The University of Kansas, US.