Penn INSPIRE guides scientists and physicians to the forefront of academia
Historically, Black/African Americans, Hispanic/Latinxs, and Native Americans have been and remain consistently underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), and the number of scientists from URM backgrounds hired as faculty in medical school basic science departments is nowhere near the actual number of potential candidates.
Penn INSPIRE co-directors Jose S. Campos (left), Alejandra Fausto, and Jorge (Jay) Ortiz-Carpena (right). (Image: Penn Medicine News)
Ph.D. candidates Jorge (Jay) Ortiz-Carpena, Jose S. Campos, and Alejandra Fausto shared a passion for supporting underrepresented minority (URM) scientists, and drive to address the challenges students face in working towards career opportunities in academia.
In order to provide a voice for other URM scientists and offer support, they began planning to create a group that would be a trainee-led coalition advocating for scientists and physicians historically marginalized and excluded in STEM across all degree and professional levels.
“We did not want to ask for a seat at the table. We wanted to break the mold and create our own table, where everyone would have a seat,” Ortiz-Carpena says.
In October 2020, Ortiz-Carpena founded the Penn Interdisciplinary Network for Scientists Promoting Inclusion, Retention, and Equity (Penn INSPIRE) with Campos and Fausto joining as co-directors. The group’s main areas of focus are to create inclusive platforms and advocate for and implement initiatives to empower individuals with diverse ethnicities, backgrounds, gender identities, and sexual orientations—those at the margins of academia.
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In honor of Valentine's Day, and as a way of fostering community in her Shakespeare in Love course, Becky Friedman took her students to the University Club for lunch one class period. They talked about the movie "Shakespeare in Love," as part of a broader conversation on how Shakespeare's works are adapted.
In Becky Friedman’s English course Shakespeare in Love, undergraduate students analyze language, genre, and adaptation in the Bard’s plays through the lens of love.
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Dorit Aviv, director of Weitzman’s Thermal Architecture Lab, studies how humans, technology, and design intersect, paving the way for the development of novel approaches to cooling people efficiently.
