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 Cover Story

 

BITSian Women - You go girl! 

BY Himabindu Chitta ('02), Krithika Kalyan ('00), Bharathi Balakrishnan ('00), Deeptha Ganapathy ('95), Aditi Pany ('00) and Dileepan Narayanan ('00) 

Academia 

In theory, women should find few obstacles in pursuing a career in academia where they are more sheltered from external social and political stigma. Yet it remains a concern that women continue to face the glass ceiling syndrome, have limited networking due to the lack of an “old girls club” and face inadequate legislation to empower the working mother.

In developing countries, women face increased challenges, where higher education is limited and sometimes restricted to women depending on the socio-religious fabric of that country. Economic and family constraints many times limit women from dreaming beyond their own borders to purse their dreams.
In spite of the challenges faced and the sad but true fact on discrimination, women have progressed in the academic profession at various levels accounting for many success stories.

16.jpg Dr. Jyothi Mathur is currently the Educational Programs Coordinator for Interdisciplinary Computational Graduate Specializations at Purdue University. She joined BITS, Pilani in 1971. She has her B.Sc, M.Sc(Math), M.Tech(CS), and Ph.D.(CS) degrees from BITS, Pilani.  Dr Jyothi Mathur was an Assistant Lecturer and later a Research Associate at BITS. She was awarded the Fulbright Fellowship in 1985 and was a post doctoral research at the Georgia Institute of Technology. From 1987 to 1992, she was a Visiting faculty, Computer Science Department at Purdue University. She now lives in West Lafayette (USA) with her husband who is a BITS alumnus. Dr. Jyothi Mathur teaches Sitar at the studio she established in 2002. She is very involved with her local community and has had several Sitar recitals for fundraising.

Dr. Reena Aggarwal (nee Garg) is currently a Visiting Professor of Finance in Sloan School of Management, MIT and Stallkamp Faculty Fellow and Professor of Finance, Georgetown University. She joined BITS in 1974 for her MMS. She earned her PhD in Finance from University of Maryland. She was the Interim Dean of the McDonough School of Business for 2004-2005. As a Fulbright Scholar in Brazil and Chile, she examined stock markets and privatization programs. Dr. Aggarwal was named in the "Outstanding Faculty" article in the Business Week Guide to the Best Business Schools.

17.jpgDr. Ritu Lohtia is Associate Professor of Marketing at Georgia State University (Atlanta, USA).  She graduated in 1986 with a Master's in Management Studies from BITS, Pilani. In 1991, she earned her PhD from University of Maryland in Business Administration. Dr. Lohtia was the Highly Commended Winner in 1976 for the article published in the Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing. In 1994 she was the second runner-up for the Best Article published in the Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing.

18.jpgDr. Lata Narayanan is currently an Associate Professor in the Computer Science Department and Undergraduate Program Director at Concordia University (Montreal, Canada). Her research interests are Mobile computing, WDM networks, algorithms for routing on distributed networks and parallel algorithms and computation. She has over 13 journal publications and over 25 conference publications.

Dr. Neelam Gupta is currently an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Department at the University of Arizona (Tuscon, USA). She graduated from BITS in 1986. She obtained her PhD from Purdue University in 1999.

20.jpg Swarnalatha Ashok is currently an Associate at the Institute of Systems Science of the National University of Singapore (Singapore). She earned her MSc Tech. degree in Computer Science from BITS, Pilani. Prior to joining ISS, she was managing network management (cellular networks) software development projects at the Motorola Software Centre, Singapore.

Dr Padmini Srinivasan is a Professor at The University of Iowa (Iowa City, USA). She graduated from BITS in 1978 with a Master’s in Biological Sciences. She obtained her PhD in Information Studies from Syracuse University in 1985. She is a Professor at the School of Library & Information Science & the Department of Management Sciences at The University of Iowa. Her research interests are text mining, web mining, topical crawlers, text categorization, information filtering, formal models for information retrieval (with special emphasis on biomedical applications).

19.jpgDr. Monica Valluri is the Assistant Director of Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics and Senior Research Associate at the Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics in The University of Chicago (Chicago, USA). She graduated from BITS in 1987 with her Masters in Physics and obtained her PhD in Astrophysics from IIS, Bangalore in 1993. She was a Visiting Professor in University of La Plata, Argentina in 1999 and Visiting Scientist in University of Marseilles, France in 2000. From 1999 to 2001 she was an Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Chicago.
 

Discrimination in Academia?  
  • Women represent 41% of the nearly 1 million faculty members in the U.S.
  • In 2-year institutions, women account for 42% of full professors.
  • In 4-year liberal arts colleges, women account for 23% of full professors.
  • In research universities, women account for 17% of full professors.
  • For each year after securing a tenure-track job, male assistant professors are 23% more likely to earn tenure.
  • For each year after earning tenure, male professors are 35% more likely to be named full professors.
* Source: University of Chicago


 
 
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