White House, the Stories of Women in STEM Will Remain Untold Because of Your Website Problems

I am a member of the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) and last week I received, through its e-list announcements, the following information:

Honoring Women in STEM. The White House has posted a website with audio stories about women in science, technology, engineering, or math (STEM) who have contributed to critical advancements in their field. The Administration is encouraging others to submit their own stories of women in STEM who have inspired them (e.g., school teacher) to pursue a STEM degree and/or who have contributed to S&T advancements. Go here to submit your story.

After submitting the grades for my students in  my class, I decided to check out the website.

 I  listened to a number of the podcasts, which are nicely done, several of which are by the new Chief Technology Officer, Megan Smith. I then proceeded to add to the stories, and wrote about my doctoral dissertation advisor at Brown University, Professor Stella Dafermos. I also added my experiences.

Then it was time to press the blue Commit button at the bottom of the above page.

And what I got is the page below.

I tweeted to to Megan Smith and also to the White House and tried over several days to submit, hoping that maybe the website problem had been fixed - to no avail.

Mr. President and Madame CTO, the stories of  Women in STEM will remain Untold, unless you fix the website! I am getting feelings of deja vu - ironic - of healthcare.gov.

Dynamics of Disasters Symposium at AAAS in Boston

There is much that by working together we can achieve.

In particular, by bringing disciplines together to harness our skills and expertise, there is some hope that we can help to relieve some of the suffering associated with disasters, whether natural or man-made.

I have organized a symposium for the AAAS 2013 Annual Meeting, which will take place February 14-18, 2013 in Boston, Massachusetts. The symposium, entitled, Dynamics of Disasters: Harnessing the Science of Networks To Save Lives, will take place on Sunday, February 17. at the Hynes Convention Center.

I would like to thank the AAAS and AMS for supporting the proposal that described this symposium. 

I would also like to thank the experts who are luminaries in their fields of engineering, operations research and management science, and optimization and supply chains and logistics, for agreeing to take part in it. Without them. and their terrific work, this symposium would not be possible. 

The discussants are: Dr. Jose Holguin-Veras, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and Dr. Tina Wakolbinger, Vienna University of Economics and Business in Austria.

The speakers are:

Dr. David McLaughlin, University of Massachusetts Amherst, who will be speaking on
Chasing Storms Across Disciplines,

Dr. Laura McLay, Virginia Commonwealth University, who will speak about
The Emergency Medical and Fire Calls During Severe Weather Events, and 

Dr. Panos M. Pardalos, University of Florida, whose presentation is on Assessing the Vulnerability of Evacuation Plans via Critical Element Detection.

The motivation for organizing such a timely symposium was as follows: The number of disasters is growing as well as the number of people of affected by disasters, with accompanying societal and economic losses as vividly demonstrated by Superstorm Sandy and Hurricanes Katrina and Irene. The understanding of the dynamics of natural or man-made disasters is, hence, a problem of great importance globally.

However, due to the inherent nature of disasters, there are complex challenges: the critical infrastructure, including the transportation, logistical and communication systems, may have been severely negatively impacted and their functionality compromised; there is a short time window in which to respond with the critical needs products, which must be delivered in order to prevent loss of life and human suffering, and there may be great uncertainty due to the disruptions, among other complications.

Moreover, there may be different organizations competing for resources and the complex interactions may result in inadequate financing, inappropriate coordination and response, congestion, inadequate delivery of supplies, including of relief personnel, etc. This symposium focuses on the dynamics of disasters, through the prism of mathematical modeling and the science of networks, to address such issues as prediction, communications, response and recovery, and the resiliency of evacuation networks. This symposium is intended to be accessible to a general scientific audience and will communicate the effectiveness of a multidisciplinary approach for the investigation of critical real-world phenomena. 

We hope that you can join us for the AAAS 2013 Annual Meeting and for our symposium. 

Diversity for Scientific Innovation

Alan L. Leshner, the Chief Executive Officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), wrote an excellent commentary in the latest issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education, entitled: "We Need to Reward Those Who Nurture a Diversity of Ideas in Science."

In his commentary, he argues that, by increasing the diversity of the scientific human-resource pool, we will inevitably enhance the diversity of scientific ideas, since, by definition, innovation requires the ability to think in new and transformative ways. Moreover, many of the best new ideas come from new participants in science and engineering enterprises, from those who have been less influenced by traditional scientific paradigms, thinking, and theories than those who have always been a part of the established community.

I completely agree with Mr. Leshner that we need to enhance diversity in terms of the inclusion of women and minorities, and reading his thoughtful piece truly brightened my day since it shows that others recognize the need. I would, however, add that we also need to break up disciplinary silos and to work on creating diversity across disciplines, and only then, will we be able to, as President Obama stated in his State of the Union address (coincidentally, I was in DC then for the Transportation Research Board (TRB) meeting), "out-innovate, out-educate, and outbuild the rest of the world."

Indeed, creativity is found everywhere and needs to be nurtured.

Finally, as Leshner so well elucidates, universities need to recognize faculty that work on increasing participation in science and engineering and even notes that universities should also pay tribute to such faculty through public acknowledgment of such successes through press releases, articles in university publications, etc., to send a clear message of support. Personally, working with a diverse body of students is the greatest reward since we all learn so much from one another -- how boring the world would be if there was perfect homogeneity!

Collective Behavior from Animals to Pedestrians and Traffic Flow -- Symposium at the AAAS meeting

The AAAS Meeting taking place now in Washington DC is simply fantastic -- the weather the past two days was mild (with even forsythia starting to bloom) but, best of all, are the fascinating talks and the level of science and discussion at this meeting. I have been on an intellectual "high" since arriving in Washington. This conference with about 1,000 speakers is taking place at the Washington Convention Center.

Yesterday, the Mathematics and Collective Behavior Symposium took place, which was organized by Dr. Warren Page. Dr. Iain Couzin began the symposium with gorgeous videos of birds swarming, fish swimming, and throughout his presentation interwove clips of animal collective behavior (including that of sheep and caribou) coupled with some of the mathematical modeling and simulations that he conducts in his laboratory at Princeton. He even included results of a study that he did on undergraduates to try to understand pedestrian movements.

Dr. Pierre Degond then discussed his really interesting work on pedestrian flows and how the flows tend to assemble into lanes of traffic. He even mentioned cost functions associated with transportation flows. Both these speakers captivated the audience and the Q&A was great, but much too short. One audience member even noted crowds in disasters, so when it came for me to present my talk on User-optimized and System-optimized Travel Behavior, I was really ready, given the energy on the panel and in the audience.

In my presentation, I discussed the role that congestion is playing not only in urban transportation networks but also on the Internet and electric power networks. We are living in a nonlinear world. I spoke about selfish versus non-selfish travel behavior and the implications for congestion and travel time.

I brought out the Braess paradox, how we got to translate the original article, which had been published in German in 1968, with Professor Dietrich Braess and Dr. Tina Wakolbinger, so that scientists from any discipline could readily read its contents. I spoke about the methodologies that we use, and have developed, to formulate and solve centralized (system-optimized) versus decentralized (user-optimized) decision-making problems in a unifying way and how the theory of projected dynamical systems can be applied to capture the dynamic adjustment processes underlying a plethora of equilibrium problems, including traffic. I also spoke about what happens to the user-optimized flow patterns as demand varies over time and noted a recent result (in a theorem) that establishes that, as demand increases, the Braess paradox works itself out, suggesting a wisdom of crowds phenomenon, even in selfish networks. in which travelers only care about their own best route of travel.

I also talked about the network efficiency / performance measure that Dr. Patrick Qiang and I constructed that has been used to assess the importance of various links in transportation networks around the world.

I then went on to discuss our research on disasters and what concepts of movements need to be addressed there, as well as, how system-optimization can help in the optimal design of humanitarian-based supply chains for critical needs products.

I brought up how how research in network models, variational inequalities, and projected dynamical systems has now been applied to predator-prey systems and food webs, with notable success in fisheries, which helped to tie the talks at the symposium together.

The questions after my presentation were wonderful, thanks to such a knowledgeable and insightful audience, and many in the audience stayed for quite a while longer, after the symposium had officially ended, since there were so many interesting issues brought up, even potential applications to healthcare. I got a chance to speak with a female computer science faculty member from Howard University and a researcher who works in defense in Canada, the country of my birth.

I also had a chance to speak with journalists from Science News, The Economist, and was interviewed by a radio show host from Milan, Italy (now, how cool is that)! Of course, I had to tell him that the paper that I wrote (and had included a reference to in my presentation) that showed how the traffic flows evolve as demand varies in the Braess network (with applications to the Internet) was written with Professor David Parkes of Harvard and professor Patrizia Daniele of the University of Catania in Italy! I then had lunch with a journalist who focuses on the pharmaceutical industry, and we could not stop talking about global supply chains for medicines as well as food.

The symposium was taped and I believe that AAAS will make it available.

My presentation, in pdf format, can be accessed here.

And today I found a paper that discusses models of crowds, panic behavior, and disasters and that cites not only my translation with Braess and Wakolbinger, but even work of Professor Constantine Dafermos of Brown University, who was the husband of my dissertation advisor at Brown University, Professor Stella Dafermos, who passed away two decades ago. The abstract notes that the researchers' model is able to reproduce the so-called Braess paradox for pedestrians! And, yesterday, we even noted that, when it comes to evacuations, it may be best to actually have a divider in the exit door -- reducing capacity may actually improve traffic flow!

Women Scientists in the 21st Century -- A Congressional Panel Speaks

On September 23, 2010, L'Oreal USA and Discover magazine convened a panel for a Congressional briefing on Women in Science. The panel: For Women in Science: 21st Century Policy & Politics covered issues faced by women in science and explored public policies that might address the challenges facing the advancement of female scientists.

The panel was sponsored by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson of Texas and included:

Sheril Kirshenbaum, Research Associate at University of Texas at Austin’s Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy, author, and blogger for Discovermagazine.com (Moderator)

Russlynn Ali, Assistant Secretary, Office of Civil Rights, U.S. Department of Education

Dr. Shirley Malcom, Head of Education and Human Resources, American Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS)

Dr. Joan Steitz, Sterling Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, Yale, and

Dr. Sara Seager, Professor of Planetary Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

A thought-provoking overview of the provocative discussions that took place at the panel is provided by Alison Fairbrother who writes:

And perhaps not surprisingly, results of a recent survey of 1,300 female and male scientists suggest that female scientists might be making significant personal sacrifices to achieve professional goals. The survey, commissioned by L'Oreal, in partnership with the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), revealed that 61 percent of female respondents were struggling to balance their personal lives and their careers in science, technology, engineering, and math (the so-called "STEM" fields).

Speaking from a personal experience that took place just this week, I had been part of a proposed panel for the upcoming AAAS meeting in DC and had contributed to the writing of the proposal, only to be told by the organizer of the panel (a male) this week in an email message that, for some unclear reason, I was now "cut" from the panel. Maybe it is my plumbing.

No problem, I am back to work on an invited paper and since the "let-down" above have gotten several invitations to speak in other countries (I go to Washington DC often enough).