ellestra | Something cool is happening on my birthday

Today is Ada Lovelace Day and this means this year it's on my birthday. Ada Lovelace Day besides reminding people of her achievements is also about the achievements of all women in STEM, both historic and modern. She was the first programmer but many don't think of There are many events that are happening today but the one that I like the most is Ada Lovelace Edit-a-thon 2013- editing Wikipedia to put in more articles about women in science. Most of Wikipedia editors are male and it suffers from certain bias and this is set to rectify that.

This is also a day to blog about women in science but since this is my birthday and I am a woman and a scientist and so are many of my friends this is about people who don't qualify for the Wikipedia (yet).

I just went for a trip with my friends. They both work in NIH so they just had two weeks of unplanned vacations anyway and they just started third. The US government shutdown means they cannot even check their emails not to mention getting anywhere close to the Institute. They do get paid - one is postdoc and the other is a student on Polish scholarship - so they should just lay back and enjoy it, right? But science is not only a job but also a passion - something you like to do if you stayed with it so far. And most importantly it takes time to plan and execute the experiments. Stuff they did just before the shutdown - weeks of work - went to drain. The reagents are getting old. The time is running out. One of the friends has to go back to Poland soon to finish her PhD and there are experiment she needs to do before she goes and she is running out of time.

And they even don't have it that bad. They are working on bacteria and yeast which means the experiments are relatively short and you can freeze (literally) what you are working on. There are people who work on things that take months or even years and sometimes also could save people's lives. Most people think about NIH as completely non-essential so they don't pay attention to how it cripples not only one of the best science institutions in the world but also all that's connected to it - and that's most of American science. That is something that makes the technological advancement possible and brought countless scientists from all over the world here. If this continues and repeats again they all may find something else to do somewhere safer. I know for some of those who caused shutdown this would actually be a desirable result but I hope it's not going to happen.

Women in science are still facing bias and it's more difficult for us to keep working and get on tenure track. It's better then it used to be and daycares are more and more available (my friend's husband who also works for NIH now has to take care of two small kids and he's already had enough) but it's still harder and bunch of politicians throwing temper tantrum doesn't help.