Jessica Wade on Chiral Materials, Open Knowledge, and Representation in STEM

Conversations with Tyler

Society & Culture, Education

4.8 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 5 April 2023

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Jessica Wade is a physicist at Imperial College London who, while spending her day working on special carbon-based materials that can be used as semiconductors, has spent her nights writing nearly 2,000 Wikipedia entries about underrepresented figures in science. That, along with numerous other forms of public engagement—including writing a children’s book about nanotechnology—is all in an effort to actually do something productive to correct gender and racial biases in STEM.

She joined Tyler to discuss if there are any useful gender stereotypes in science, distinguishing between productive and unproductive ways to encourage women in science, whether science Twitter is biased toward men, how AI will affect gender participation gaps, how Wikipedia should be improved, how she judges the effectiveness of her Wikipedia articles, how she’d improve science funding, her work on chiral materials and its near-term applications, whether writing a kid’s science book should be rewarded in academia, what she learned spending a year studying art in Florence, what she’ll do next, and more.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video.

Recorded February 21st, 2023

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Conversations with Tyler is produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University,
0:09.4	bridging the gap between academic ideas and real world problems.
0:13.5	Learn more at mercatis.org.
0:16.2	For full transcript of every conversation, enhanced with helpful links, visit
0:21.0	ConversationsWithT Tyler.com
0:26.3	Hello everyone and welcome back to Conversations with Tyler.
0:29.3	Today I am here in London with the great Jessica Wade.
0:32.6	She is a researcher at Imperial College London, well known for her work in chiral materials
0:38.2	and ramen spectroscopy.
0:40.1	She is written a children's book on nanotechnology called nano.
0:44.2	In the public eye, she is best of all known for having written over 1900 Wikipedia entries
0:50.3	as of February 2023.
0:53.4	It will shortly be more and those tend to focus on the history of women in science.
0:58.3	Jessica, welcome.
0:59.3	I am so excited to be here.
1:01.4	Hello.
1:02.6	Let's start with women in science.
1:04.1	We will get to your research, but your writings, why is it that women in history were so
1:08.9	successful in astronomy so early on compared to other fields?
1:12.6	Oh, that's such a hard question and a fascinating one.
1:15.2	I think probably when you look back at who was allowed to be a scientist in the past, at
1:20.0	which type of women were allowed to be a scientist, you were probably quite wealthy and you either
	...

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