Sarah Demers: “Navigating Gender Bias as Women in Science” and “Duologue: Dance and Physics”

Prof. Sarah Demers, the Horace D. Taft Associate Professor of Physics at Yale University, gave the keynote speech entitled “Navigating Gender Bias as Women in Science” at the opening ceremony of ELIS 2016. Reviewing the research on the topics of explicit and implicit gender bias, Prof. Sarah Demers examined how our biases influence our work and our opportunities to better analyze strategies that can be employed to make science more welcoming for all.

In “Duologue: Dance and Physics”, Prof Demers, in collaboration with Kisook Cho, showcased the vast potential of interdisciplinary research, using Newton’s laws of motion to better understand ballet positions, and poses. For academics often focused on the narrow bounds of their research, stepping back to see the bigger picture of how that research fits into the wider world can be a potent source of inspiration.