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       The GWIS National Leadership and The University of Wisconsin's GWIS Beta Chapter invites you to attend the 91st SDE/GWIS National Meeting and Scientific Conference in Madison, Wisconsin June 14-17th, 2012. The program will consist of business meetings and a Grand Chapter meeting on June 14-15th, with an open scientific conference on June 16-17. We are honored to have GWIS honorary member Dr. Madeleine M. Joullié and University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Dr. Tracey Holloway among our invited presenters speaking to our theme, Pioneers and Innovators:  Broadening Perspectives. We will also offer presentations from previous GWIS National Fellowships winners, and a scientific poster session. On Sunday, we will feature a professional development session with Julie Stuart, of Making Ideas Visible, to tackle the discussion of big ideas for women in science in an innovative way.  

      The conference will take place at beautiful new facilities on the University of Wisconsin campus at Union South and Wisconsin Institutes of Discovery. Please join us to connect, learn, and mingle.  

Wisconsin Institutes of Discovery

      More information and registration will be soon available on the SDE/GWIS Website: www.gwis.org.  

Registration for the conference will open Friday, March 23rd 2012.Hotel registration will close Thursday, May 10th, 2012, and final registration will close May 30, 2012.

Science Insider reports that this year has given Chinese Scientists reason to celebrate: China has earmarked 32.45 billion yuan ($5.14 billion) for basic research in 2012-up 26% from last year's appropriation. To read more click here.        

Biographies of Women in Science in India  

India launched a Women in Science Initiative in 2003 and the online biographies are a result of this. The biographies explore questions such as: Who encouraged them? What were their struggles? What led them to choose their particular field? What are the key questions at the cutting edge of modern research? Why choose a life in science at all? To read more click here. 

A new paper by two developmental psychologists on the dearth of women in academic science titled "When Scientists Choose Motherhood," argues that the cause of the gender imbalance is much easier to identify than most researchers have posited. Published in American Scientist in the March-April 2012 volume, they write "To place the role of this choice in context, we consider its impact on women's careers relative to the impacts of other variables that may reduce women's participation in the sciences. Our own findings as well as research by others show that the effect of children on women's academic careers is so remarkable that it eclipses other factors in contributing to women's under-representation in academic science." To read more click here.  

Recording and Corresponding Secretary, Dr. Uromi Goodale, read the book "How Breakthroughs Happen" as part of her IRACDA (Institutional Research and Academic Career Development Award) postdoctoral training at the University of California San Diego and thought that the GWIS membership would benefit from its author's insights. Below is an excerpt from its book jacket. Dr. Andrew Hargadon is Associate Professor and Director of Technology Management Programs at the Graduate School of Management at the University of California, Davis.  

Did you know that the incandescent lightbulb first emerged some thirty years before Thomas Edison famously "turned night into day"? Or that Henry Ford's revolutionary assembly line came from an unlikely blend of observations from Singer sewing machines, meatpacking, and Campbell's Soup?

In this fascinating study of innovation, engineer and social scientist Andrew Hargadon argues that our romantic notions about innovation as invention are actually undermining our ability to pursue breakthrough innovations.

Based on ten years of study into the origins of historic inventions and modern innovations from the lightbulb to the transistor to the Reebok Pump athletic shoe, How Breakthroughs Happen takes us beyond the simple recognition that revolutionary innovations do not result from flashes of brilliance from lone inventors or organizations. In fact, innovation is really about creatively recombining ideas, people, and objects from past technologies in ways that spark new technological revolutions.

This process of "technology brokering" is so powerful, explains Hargadon, because it exploits the networked nature--the social side--of the innovation process. Moving between historical accounts of labs and factory floors where past technological revolutions originated and field studies of similar processes in today's organizations, Hargadon shows how technology brokers create an enduring capacity for breakthrough innovations.

Technology brokers simultaneously bridge the gaps in existing networks that separate distant industries, firms, and divisions to see how established ideas can be applied in new ways and places, and build new networks to guide these creative re-combinations to mass acceptance. How Breakthroughs Happen identifies three distinct strategies for technology brokering that managers can implement in their organizations.

Hargadon suggests that Edison and his counterparts were no smarter than the rest of us--they were simply better at moving through the networked world of their time. Intriguing, practical, and counterintuitive, How Breakthroughs Happen can help managers transform their own firms into modern-day invention factories.