Happy Ada Lovelace Day from JoVE! Named after the first female computer programmer, Ada Lovelace Day is a worldwide celebration of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The lack of women in STEM fields, especially at the post-graduate level, is a much talked-about topic today. The aim of the day is to highlight preeminent women scientists in hopes of creating high profile role models for young females in STEM education.
Today, JoVE would like to recognize one of our many outstanding female authors, Dr. Susan Lindquist, Professor of Biology at MIT and member of the Whitehead Institute. A pioneer in protein folding, Dr. Lindquist has shown that aberrant protein configurations can cause disease without any genetic changes. Her work has implications in the study and treatment of prion diseases, such as mad cow disease or Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease, neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease, and systemic amyloid diseases like AL amyloidosis or senile systemic amyloidosis. Dr. Lindquist, despite her parents' expectation of becoming a housewife, is one of the few female recipients of the President's National Medal of Science - there have only ever been 40 female recipients out of the 475 prizes awarded since 1962. She is an exemplary role model to young women interested in STEM fields that still face pressure to pursue a "female" profession.
Watch a JoVE interview with Susan Lindquist, and check out her JoVE article, "Screening for Amyloid Aggregation by Semi-Denaturing Detergent-Agarose Gel Electrophoresis."
- written by Jen Carroll -
