Female graduate students take over Planetary Science Conference

Meet the space women and men of Lassonde

Although enrolment by women in undergraduate programs in STEM has increased in recent years, there is still a large discrepancy between the number of men and women in professional positions and academia. Out of the 288,870 professional engineers in Canada, only 12.8 percent are women as of 2016, reports Engineers Canada.

Within the Planetary Exploration Instrumentation Lab (PIL) at York there are currently six graduate students (two PhD, four MSc) and two postdoctoral researchers who are either working on space instruments for future solar system missions, or enhancing our understanding of the bodies that these instruments would be used on.

He also noticed that discussion of women and non-binary issues in STEM fields were pushed to informal meetings in spare time, after or between sessions. WPSE will shake up the narrative; all of the keynote speakers are women and the panel discussions specifically highlight issues that have been previously discussed at the after party.

Supporting Women in STEM is the primary goal of the event, though the conference isn’t only for women.

As Mazrouei explains:

After learning about the efforts of its alumni and the desire of current Lassondians to present at WPSE, the Lassonde 50:50 project decided to step in and sponsor students’ participation by covering registration and poster printing costs.

The following are profiles of six PIL students that will be attending WPSE 2018:

Beth Lymer recently completed her MSc in Earth and Space Science at Lassonde. Her work focused on determining the usefulness of a non-destructive Laser-induced fluorescence spectroscopy instrument for mineral and organic detection in carbonaceous chondrite meteorites. This work will aid asteroid sample-return missions such as OSIRIS-REx in creating time-efficient, high resolution spectral maps on pristine samples to determine areas of interest for further scientific study. Beth is now focusing on science outreach and improving public science literacy in a Masters of Museum Studies program at the University of Toronto.

Catheryn Ryan is a planetary geologist and part of the science team for a NASA research project that simulates manned Martian missions in volcanic environments on Earth. Their current work involves using an experimental laser instrument to search for molecular signs of life in rock samples collected during these missions. Catheryn’s interests lie mainly in planetary surface geology, and they hope to continue studying Earth environments analogous to Martian ones, and participating in both real and simulated Martian missions.

Thamara Saturnino is a MSc student in PIL, originally from Brazil, who moved to Toronto to study electrical conductivity of meteorites. The intent of her study is to compare the resistance of the samples before and after exposing them to space weathering conditions. To do this she will be using the new 5 Tesla mini-Cryogen Free material property measurement system.

Dylan Hickson graduated with a Bachelor’s in Earth and Environmental Science and a Bachelor’s in Physical Science from McMaster University in 2014 with a focus on geophysics and astronomy. Dylan is now a PhD candidate in Lassonde researching microwave material properties and modelling of planetary surfaces with radar, specifically Near-Earth Asteroids like 101955 Bennu, the target of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission.

Kristen Cote has a Bachelor’s degree in astrophysics from the University of Alberta, and is now at Lassonde working on her Master’s. Her passion is to use optics and techniques in optical science to advance our ability to explore space. She is currently working on a new, compact instrument that can obtain chemical information from a target (i.e. its elemental makeup) using a technique called laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy, or LIBS. LIBS has already been proven to work on Mars as part of an instrument called ChemCam on the Curiosity rover. Her system is a bit different, using small, micro-Joule pulse energies to obtain the same information on a smaller spatial scale, aiming to improve the resolution of a set of measurements.

At the same time she is part of a MDA/INO/York collaboration on a Canadian Space Agency contract to characterize a novel laser system that combines both LIBS and another, similar technique called Raman spectroscopy.

Cosette Gilmour is a planetary geologist who specializes in the study of meteorites. She has experience analyzing metal and water abundances in chondrite meteorites using Laser Ablation Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) and Thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA). Cosette is currently working with the new and exciting 5 Tesla mini-Cryogen Free system in PIL, which can measure a wide range of physical properties such as resistivity, thermal conductivity, and magnetic susceptibility at temperatures as low as 2 K. She will be analyzing meteorite samples at different temperatures to gain a better understanding of how thermal properties change with varying temperatures.

Cosette is very passionate about asteroid mining, and hopes to work for Planetary Resources someday.

In talking about the conference, the students discussed why having events like WPSE 2018 are important for them individually but also for the community of women in STEM as a whole.

Catheryn expressed the necessity of events tied specifically to women and non-binary STEM issues, saying “[it] is important because often we are overlooked in the larger STEM community, and there’s a need to highlight the voices of people within this field that may otherwise be ignored.”

Dylan emphasized the importance of allies in the journey to gender parity in science, saying, “I think that the focus and tackling of equality issues in STEM brought up by the conference is important to support, and attending the conference will give me an opportunity to listen and learn from the experiences of others so that I can be a positive influence for the future of STEM fields. ”

All of the students agree that women are underrepresented in science, and that the conference will combat this by granting participants an environment in which women can feel confident in presenting their research.

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