2004-05 Distinguished Women Scientists and Engineers Speakers Program

Debra Rolison

Surface Chemistry Branch,
Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, D.C.

Nanostructured Mesoporous Three-Dimensional Architectures for Catalysis, Sensing, Energy Storage—You Name It!

Tuesday, April 26
9:45 a.m.
331 Smith Hall

Nothing, i.e., porosity, is an important part of any nanostructured material that does chemistry. Whether the chemistry is labeled as catalysis, electrocatalysis, biocatalysis, molecular recognition, sensing, fabrication, or synthesis, the reactions are most effective when the transport paths through which molecules move into the nanostructured architecture are included as an integral part of the design. Such advanced architectures can now be created in which the pore and solid structural components are controlled on the nanoscale by the use of sol-gel syntheses—including the use of metal oxide sols to “nanoglue” appropriate guests into the solid network. The architectural nature of an aerogel makes it especially well suited to sensors, reactors, and energy-storage and conversion devices in which rapid transport of detectable, reactive, or modifying species and readily accessible surface areas is critical to performance. 

Chemical and biomolecular specificity and diversity can be introduced into aerogels by (1) using silica (or titanium or cerium or iron oxide) sols as a nanoglue to create guest-host composite aerogels, including colloidal metal and biomolecular guests; (2) covalent modification of sols or gels with fluorophores or molecular recognition centers; (3) synthesis of functional solid networks in the aerogel nanoarchitectures; or (4) deposition of interconnected nanowires on the high-surface-area silica network.  Guests ranging in size over six orders of magnitude (from a nanometer, which is smaller than the domain size of the colloidal nanoglue, to a millimeter) can be accommodated in the aerogel host.  The resulting composite is a material in which each phase can be independently tailored as needed for the desired application.

Can Title IX Do for Women in Science and Engineering What It Has Done for Women in Sports?

Wednesday, April 27
1:00 p.m.
331 Smith Hall

After every shock to the U.S. national psyche—Pearl Harbor, the Soviet launch of Sputnik, the 9/11 attacks—the nation emphasizes reinvestment in science and technology, including reassessing education in the STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). But today, our most recent national shock finds the U.S. blessed with a population that is culturally diverse and embodies a higher fraction of women attending college for their undergraduate degrees than men. We have a timely opportunity to redirect the nature of the research enterprise to one that is inclusive of diversity:  both of the humans who will undertake the science and technology journey of the 21st century and the knowledge base they will need to take with them. 

Unfortunately, women are not applying for STEM faculty positions in proportion to their Ph.D. production numbers, especially at research institutions. Their disproportionate absence warns us that U.S. academic departments are unhealthy to those professors (men and women) who want fulfilling lives beyond academe and unhealthy to those women, who once they demonstrate productivity, scholarship, and mentorship, still garner less respect—and the ancillary rewards of space, salary, funding, and awards—than their male colleagues. 

Is it time to apply the logic of Title IX—withholding federal funds—to U.S. STEM departments for their entrenched inability to increase the number of women represented on their faculties?  Such a threat may be just the impetus necessary to create departmental environments that women are willing to call home. The Government Accountability Office's July 2004 report on women’s participation in the sciences reminds federal agencies that fund scientific research that Title IX is the law, and it reasserts that these agencies must begin Title IX assessments of compliance in the STEM departments and institutions they fund—and that they should have been doing so for the past 30 years. And the remarks of Harvard University President Lawrence Summers on January 14, 2005, remind us that the highest levels of university administration can be part of the problem.

It is past time that women thrive, not just survive, in their career homes. Using the mechanistic philosophy of Title IX—denial of resources, including students, to recalcitrant departments—may be the start of a truly inclusive scientific enterprise in the United States.