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Argonne Shows Girls the Science Behind Careers in Research

Daylong event emphasizes the importance of mentoring and finding balance.

Like most six-year-old girls, Boyana Norris loved to color.

Unlike most six-year-olds, what she preferred to color were hundreds of little boxes.

The patterns those boxes formed were code for a room-sized computer at the Bulgarian research facility where her father worked in the late 1970s.

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Today the slick Mac Norris works on is a far cry from that massive computer—you’d need 250 of those beasts to equal the processing power of a single iPhone.

But nonetheless, those childhood days spent coding in the Bulgarian lab nourished Norris’ passion for computer science.

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She shared that enthusiasm with more than 400 high school girls from across the Chicago area who visited Argonne National LaboratoryThursday for the Science Careers in Search of Women conference.

The students toured research labs, lunched with researchers and attended panels on careers in the sciences, learning firsthand from women who balance demanding careers with a rich family life.

“We show them all the possibilities they didn’t know existed,” said the event’s co-chair Kawtar Hafidi, who is a nuclear physicist at Argonne. “[The students] talk to us and see we have families. They see we have fun.”

Hafidi said that in her experience, there are fewer women scientists in the U.S. than in her native Morocco. Norris said the same about her youth in Bulgaria, that even in a high school devoted to math and science there, the proportion of boys and girls was equal.

In her keynote address, Norris emphasized the role mentors play in guiding young women during school, as well as once they enter the workforce.

Norris' mentors included her computer scientist father, as well as a post-doctoral fellow she met as a graduate student who remains a close friend.

She also learned a more personal lesson from a visiting professor with three children who came to Argonne during Norris' own post-doc work.

"Just seeing her made a huge impact: 'Look, she's doing it,'" said Norris of how the woman juggled career and family. "Those are the things you remember, that stick with you."

Throughout the day, the students met with women such as physicist Holly Lighthall, the only female operator of Argonne’s ATLAS particle accelerator. Scientists use ATLAS to study what happens when the nuclei of atoms collide with each other, she said.

As Lighthall led a tour through the ATLAS facility, she explained that her high school only required students to take one year of math and one year of science.

“But I wanted to take all the math and science they offered,” she said. “Nobody was like, ‘Hey, you should do it.’ I was just drawn to it.”

During a visit to North Central College in Naperville, Lighthall met with the head of the physics department—a woman.

“It was the first time I saw a woman who was really interested in science,” she said. Lighthall enrolled at North Central, where she completed an internship with Argonne that led to her job in the ATLAS lab.

The conference’s programming helped build the confidence of students such as Carly Shiner, a high school junior who asked Norris during her keynote if she’s ever intimidated by her smart colleagues.

“I think today is going to do a lot to let me know I don’t have to be frightened of how smart other people are,” said Shiner, who one day hopes to be an ecologist.

Junior Qi Wang’s reasons for pursuing a science career are very personal, but she too found inspiration through the day's activities. Science was always a natural fit, but Wang said after her father died of cancer, she became more specifically interested in biomedical engineering.

Though she doesn’t share Norris’ passion for computers, Wang felt a connection with her story. 

“[Norris] was really awesome,” she said. “It’s really nice to know how other another person achieved her dream.”

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