Social Initiatives

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Women in Science

Let's begin with a clear problem statement: gender discrimination in science is real. According to a recent study, around 60% of women reported experiencing some form of sexism in the last year. Here is another study that shows the dramatic difference between women and men in positions of seniority. Here are some slides (somewhat outdated) that provide more data. At our very own IITM, there are only 12% women faculty, only 1 female dean ever and no female directors ever. So clearly, there is a problem.

Over the years, I have participated in various events to promote women in science, not only outreach to attract young students, but also to identify and spread awareness about gender related challenges at all levels. Below are some initiatives I have participated in, as well as some general resources on this subject.

My Involvement

• Invited speaker, Association for Women in Mathematics, 2022.
• Participated in movie: Women in Stem and Leadership: What nobody is talking about!
• Invited talk at Women in Computing seminar, University of Michigan. Here are the slides.
• Mentoring videos (about all aspects of research including gender issues) as part of a larger mentoring event at Crypto, 2021.
• Distinguished lecture at TIFR's Vigyan Vidushi, 2021. The talk is here. The slides are here.
• Faculty co-ordinator of Women in CS (WiCS) group at IITM.
• Featured in the NPTEL Women in STEM series.
• Part of core committee for the Women Leading IITM initiative at IIT Madras, 2021.
• Speaker at Grad Cohort's workshop targeted at female graduate students in CS. Here are my slides.
• Part of committee for the Malathi Veeraraghavan Scholar Program.
• Invited lecture at the Women in Computing Society, Ashoka University.

Other Resources

• ACM-W India is a body that focusses on the empowerment of women in computing in India.
• Complaint Committee against Sexual Harassment at IITM.
• How women are harassed out of science.
• Bullying in Science.
• Harassment of women in science.
• Troubles of women in science and how we can tackle them.
• Sheryl Sandberg's commencement speech and book
  
• Alice Silverberg's fun and informative blog.
• Understanding and fighting bias.

Technology for Society

I care deeply about using technology to solve social problems. Below are some resources on this theme.

Relevant Courses:

Several institutes have created courses that discuss the challenges of designing technological solutions for difficulties faced by the developing world. In this setting, the constraints are very different - usually such designs have to take into account local availability of labor and material, extremely low cost, robust to power failures and such other issues. Below is a list of some excellent courses I know of.

• Stanford University : Design for Extreme Affordability
• Caltech : Product Design for the Developing world

Talks

• The El Sistema music revolution
  
• 8 TED talks on how to end poverty
  
• Graduation Speech by Nipun Mehta
  

Books

• The one world schoolhouse, by Salman Khan.
• Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism, by Muhammad Yunus.
• I have a dream by Rashmi Bansal

Articles

• CNN Heroes.
  
• Light bulb from bottle
• IITM's rural technology and business incubator
• Hathkhola Medical Bank
• Super 30
• Slum dweller who founded a food chain

Miscellaneous.

My partner in crime :).