Events will be hosted January – December, 2024, once a month on a Friday, 12:00 – 14:00 pm ET. Presented over Zoom.
After each talk, we will continue the discussions in an informal social meeting with MSE. All speakers and members of the audience are welcome to join the social meeting.
Hosted by: Sue Ishaq, MSE, and finacially supported by the University of Maine Institute of Medicine and the UMaine Cultural Affairs/Distinguished Lecture Committee.
“Advancing Queer and Transgender Equity in Science (AQTES)“
Presented by Dr. JL Weissman and other members of the Advancing Queer and Transgender Equity in Science (AQTES) working group
Dec 20, 2024 12:00 PM Eastern Standard Time
Jackie Lee “JL” Weissman (they/she) is an Assistant Professor at Stony Brook University starting Fall 2024. Her research examines how microbes survive and thrive across diverse environments. She develops new tools to infer what microbes are doing and can do from DNA sequences captured directly from the environment (“metagenomes”), aiming to improve the representation of microbially-mediated biogeochemical cycles in global climate models. She also has a special interest in using a combination of comparative genomics, population genetics, and mathematical models to understand the ancient and ongoing battle between microbes and their viruses. She believes all students, with supportive training and mentorship, can become highly-capable computational biologists, and loves to show students how a little coding can go a long way.
The newly-formed group, Advancing Queer and Trans Equity in Science (AQTES), wants to improve the field of research by making the hiring process fair and welcoming for everyone. No matter what your personal identity is, we can all agree that fair and unbiased job searches are critical to hiring the best talent. But, sometimes a poorly-organized job search prevents the people with the best talent from applying at all.
In our white paper, we give suggestions on how to host a job search that is better for everyone. We provide examples and advice on how to write job adverts, create the agenda and atmosphere for the job search, how to make the interview process more accessible for everyone by remembering that we are humans and not robots, and how to support your new faculty.
Citation for the paper: Weissman, JL, Chappell, C.R., Rodrigues de Oliveira, B.F., Evans, N., Fagre, A.C., Forsythe, D., Frese, S.A., Gregor, R., Ishaq, S.L., Johnston, J., Bittu, K.R., Matsuda, S.B., McCarren, S., Ortiz Alvarez de la Campa, M., Roepkw, T.A., Sinnott-Armstrong, N., Stobie, C.S., Talluto, L., Vargas-Muñiz, J., Advancing Queer and Trans Equity in Science (AQTES). 2024. Running a queer- and trans-inclusive faculty hiring process. EcoEvoRvix repository 6791.
Perspective piece introducing the paper: Weissman JL, Chappell CR, Francesco Rodrigues de Oliveira B, Evans N, Fagre AC, Forsythe D, et al. (2024) Queer- and trans-inclusive faculty hiring—A call for change. PLoS Biol 22(11): e3002919.
Logo designed by Alex Guillen
The Ishaq Lab 