

Inspirational Women in STEM
Some women that helped light my spark
"A woman just won the prize known as "math's Nobel" — for the first time ever"
September 2019
Article by Danielle Garrand
"American Karen Uhlenbeck has won the 2019 Abel prize, often referred to as "math's Nobel" prize. The accomplished mathematician is the first woman in history to earn the distinction from the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters." -cbsnews.com
"How to take a picture of a black hole"
November 2016
Ted Talk by Katie Bouman
"At the heart of the Milky Way, there's a supermassive black hole that feeds off a spinning disk of hot gas, sucking up anything that ventures too close -- even light. We can't see it, but its event horizon casts a shadow, and an image of that shadow could help answer some important questions about the universe. Scientists used to think that making such an image would require a telescope the size of Earth -- until Katie Bouman and a team of astronomers came up with a clever alternative. Bouman explains how we can take a picture of the ultimate dark using the Event Horizon Telescope." -ted.com
"The untapped genius that could change science for the better"
August 2015
Ted Talk by Jedidah Isler
"Jedidah Isler dreamt of becoming an astrophysicist since she was a young girl, but the odds were against her: At that time, only 18 black women in the United States had ever earned a PhD in a physics-related discipline. In this personal talk, she shares the story of how she became the first black woman to earn a PhD in astrophysics from Yale -- and her deep belief in the value of diversity to science and other STEM fields. "Do not think for one minute that because you are who you are, you cannot be who you imagine yourself to be," she says. "Hold fast to those dreams and let them carry you into a world you can't even imagine.""
"How I fell in love with quasars, blazars and our incredible universe"
March 2015
Ted Talk by Jedidah Isler
"Jedidah Isler first fell in love with the night sky as a little girl. Now she's an astrophysicist who studies supermassive hyperactive black holes. In a charming talk, she takes us trillions of kilometers from Earth to introduce us to objects that can be 1 to 10 billion times the mass of the sun — and which shoot powerful jet streams of particles in our direction." -ted.com
"The hunt for a supermassive hole"
July 2009
Ted Talk by Andrea Ghez
"With new data from the Keck telescopes, Andrea Ghez shows how state-of-the-art adaptive optics are helping astronomers understand our universe's most mysterious objects: black holes. She shares evidence that a supermassive black hole may be lurking at the center of the Milky Way." -ted.com