It is International Women’s Day and the challenges faced by women in STEM careers are being discussed in forums worldwide. Some good news is a study by Henry Sauermann, Chiara Franzoni and Kourosh Shafi, who have shown that women are much more successful than men when it comes to crowdfunding money for scientific projects. The trio looked at over 700 campaigns on experiment.com, which is the largest dedicated platform to crowdfunding scientific research.
Although the majority of campaign creators on the site are men, women had a 57% success rate for reaching their targets. Their male counterparts only succeeded 43% of the time. The trio discuss the study in “Crowdfunding scientific research: Descriptive insights and correlates of funding success”.
2019 is the 30th anniversary of the World Wide Web, which was invented at CERN. Maps and navigation applications are surely some of the most useful tools available online and now even CERN’s Large Hadron Collider can be explored via Google’s Street View. You can start your journey here.
Are you worried that your research results could be used for evil purposes? If you happen to be at Canada’s University of Waterloo on 13 April, you can attend a Safeguarding science workshop to learn how to avoid the misuse of your work. Participants will explore the risk of accidental or deliberate misuse or weaponization of human pathogens and toxins, nuclear substances, advanced research, materials, and dual-use technology. Scary stuff.
