This week I am writing about “Immigrant Computer Scientists Podcast” — an oral history project featuring prominent computer scientists. The podcast is a project led by my friend Indy Gupta — a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Indy is also the host of a weekly radio show called “
I’m no scientist of any kind (but much appreciate their work!) but have two tangential notes here: not only are few women in STEM in the US, the field is even more narrow than that as “nerds” (truly a derogatory term, not fun at all) are the ones channeled into the sciences etc. this creates a huge stigma overall.
Additionally, and this will prove controversial, there are so, so many Liberal Arts majors and disciplines here they just draw promising students, disproportionately female, away from the sciences.
On a related point, all the immigrant scientists are very welcome here in America, but isn’t this part of an overall “brain drain” that hurts many developing countries when such scholars don’t return home?
Yes, "brain drain" is a real problem. But it is also contextual. Some do go back, depends on the situation. I have also seen people contributing, collaborating on projects in their home country from abroad. I think there are different ways to give back. One of the guests on the podcast is a good example of this (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jelani_Nelson).
I’m no scientist of any kind (but much appreciate their work!) but have two tangential notes here: not only are few women in STEM in the US, the field is even more narrow than that as “nerds” (truly a derogatory term, not fun at all) are the ones channeled into the sciences etc. this creates a huge stigma overall.
Additionally, and this will prove controversial, there are so, so many Liberal Arts majors and disciplines here they just draw promising students, disproportionately female, away from the sciences.
On a related point, all the immigrant scientists are very welcome here in America, but isn’t this part of an overall “brain drain” that hurts many developing countries when such scholars don’t return home?
Yes, "brain drain" is a real problem. But it is also contextual. Some do go back, depends on the situation. I have also seen people contributing, collaborating on projects in their home country from abroad. I think there are different ways to give back. One of the guests on the podcast is a good example of this (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jelani_Nelson).