So surf over to Ficka Mawa's and read a variety of fascinating posts on career paths, perspective, and changing self-image. I've only read about half of them so far, but ladies I think there is book in here.
This hasn't been an easy time for Flicka Mawa. I'm in awe about what she has been able to do.
Pat
When I was a little kid, everyone feared polio and they were right to. Polio is highly infectious and mainly effects young children. Here in the US we no longert worry so much about polio thanks to the discovery of a vaccine by Jonas Salk and it's improvement by Albert Sabin.
Now why do you care? Well two reasons-- the first is that at the age of 5 I was the first kid in my county to get the vaccine and my picture was all over the local papers. I felt I was very brave and famous and, oh yes, obnoxiously proud of myself. My older sister was furious!. She had been in the clinical trial and she got the placebo. Not only did she not get her picture in the paper, she had to to get a second series of shots-- this time with the real stuff. It took her years and years to forgive me.
But, once again, I've been digressing. The real reason I'm writing this is because yesterday, the Sabin Vaccine Institute gave out two awards to two really interesting women.
They gave their 16th Gold Medal in Vaccinology to the "Dr. Ruth of Malaria" Dr. Ruth Nussenzweig. While we are a little grumpy that it took them so long to give the award to a woman, we're impressed it was her. Her work has paved the way for the development of several new malaria vaccines. Their 1st Young Investigator Award went to Dr. Katherine O’Brien who leads the Johns Hopkins Center for American Indian Health’s Infectious Disease Group.
Congratulations to all!
Well actually I don't want to be an astronaut, I want to be like one-- especially if that astronaut is Pam Melroy. Thursday evening Tom and I went to a dinner at the Boston Museum of Science hosted by our FairerScience partner Wellesley Centers for Research on Women .
Pam, a member of the Wellesley College Board of Trustees, was the speaker. We got a chance to speak with her before the dinner and she was fabulous-- interesting, thoughtful and very, very smart. Tom asked her an intelligent question about any concerns she might have about using the Russian Soyuz to travel back and forth to the space station after the shuttle was retired. I, on the other hand, asked her what the coolest things were about being in space.
She said there were many things including feeling like a little kid whose dream has come true because you can fly. She spoke of the importance of having music while she was in space and about the differences between her first, second and third missions (she was the commander of the third). During her after dinner speech she showed home movies from space and spoke about leadership and how to establish the culture she wanted for the crew (spoiler alter-- it included taking the crew on a 10 day kayak where they kayaked many miles each day).
The food was good, the company was better and we got an autographed picture and some astronaut ice cream-- hey it doesn't get much better than that!