Diversifying the Field
One of the ongoing issues in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and medicine) fields is a lack of diversity among students and faculty. Bioengineering stands out among other engineering fields because it enjoys terrific gender diversity. For example, about half of Penn Bioengineers are women, a feature of our class that goes back decades.
However, diversity extends well beyond gender. For example, the National Research Mentoring Network (NRMN) has been working to increase diversity, including among students with disabilities. A consortium of people and groups providing mentors for science students, the MRMN recently highlighted the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s (AAAS) Entry Point! program, which focuses on helping students with physical disabilities. Mentoring, it turns out is a big part of helping these students succeed.
Another recent development that should help to increase diversity in the field is the awarding of a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation’s Directorate of Engineering to the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the College of Menominee Nation (CMN), a native American college in Wisconsin, to collaborate in engineering research and education. The new grant builds on a program begun in 2010 between the colleges to build labs and facilitate the transfer of pre-engineering students from CMN to UWM.
Brain Science Developments
Speaking of education, three recent news stories discuss how we might be able to expedite the learning process, increase intelligence, and reward ourselves when we create art. In one of the stories, a company called Kernel is investing $100 million in research at the University of Southern California to determine whether using brain implants, which have been helpful in some patients with epilepsy, can be used to increase or recover memory. If successful, this may bridge one critical treatment gap in neurology. About one out of every three people with epilepsy don’t respond to drug treatment.
In the second story, scientists at the University of Texas at Dallas were awarded a $5.8 million contract from DARPA to investigate the role of vagus nerve stimulation in accelerated learning of foreign languages. Stimulating the peripheral nervous system to activate and train areas of the brain is one more example that our nervous system is connected in ways that we do not yet understand completely. The Department of Defense hopes to use the technology to more quickly train intelligence operatives and code breakers.
Finally, in a third story involving the brain, a professor at Drexel University used functional near-infrared spectroscopy to determine which parts of the brain were activated while participants were making art. Dr. Girija Kaimal’s team found that creative endeavors activate the brain’s rewards pathway, as well as elevating the participants’ self-opinion. So making art always made people feel good about themselves; now we know more of the reasons why.