| |
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.
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.
 Dr. 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.
 Dr. 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.
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).
 Dr. 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 |
|
|
