Why we need more women in climate science

It’s a fact: women rock! In every single issue of The Beam I decided to celebrate the achievements of women scientists and entrepreneurs who have made major contributions to climate change mitigation and to swing the spotlight back onto global environmental issues. The women featured here belong to a new generation of women working to fight against the devastating impacts of climate change.

Kim Cobb
Climate scientist, USA

Kim Cobb studied biology and geology at Yale University, where she became increasingly aware of the anthropogenic causes of climate change. Today, Cobb is a professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and she seeks to understand global climate change and identify the natural and anthropogenic causes. Her research has taken her on several oceanographic voyages, where, for example, she and her team collected ancient coral fragments from the islands of Kiribati and Palmyra, which they used to measure the intensity of El Niño events over the last 7,000 years. Regularly lecturing in schools, colleges and other public groups on climate science, Cobb has also been involved with policy and is the writer of several public interest articles on climate change, inspiring other climate scientists to speak up in international debates.

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson
Marine biologist, USA

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson is an adjunct professor at New York University and the founder of Ocean Collectiv, a consultancy designed to advance ocean sustainability, grounded in social justice. Considered one of the most influential biologists of our time, Johnson believes “marine conservation is not just about counting and saving the fish. It’s about people.”

After completing her PhD, Johnson joined the United States Environmental Protection Agency, then the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, before working with the Waitt Foundation to fund ocean conservation projects. During this time, she provided maps, communications, policy support and scientific assistance to the island Barbuda as it began to regulate and protect its coastal waters. Today with Ocean Collectiv, Johnson is determined to “dispel the notion that science is ‘something that happens in a lab far away that doesn’t matter’”. 

Barkissa Fofana
Microbiologist, Burkina Faso

Barkissa Fofana believes that microbiology is key to making degraded land green and productive again, and she is carrying out research to prove it. The 30-year-old microbiologist at Burkina Faso’s Institute for Environmental and Agricultural Research (INERA) is particularly interested in the role of micro-organisms in solving desertification. Today, Barkissa is studying whether microbes can help plants to grow in some of Africa’s most arid zones, and the field of Acacia trees is her testing ground. Here she is monitoring the development of these gum-producing trees, which have been inoculated with different natural, symbiotic bacteria and fungi. She wants to find out if, and how, they help the trees to become more resistant to drought, grow better and produce more gum.

“Something has to be done to tackle the environmental problems caused by climate change, desertification and population growth”. — Barkissa Fofana

Jeanny Yao
Cofounder of BioCellection, Canada

Jeanny Yao is a student at the University of Toronto Scarborough, as well as a conference speaker on the matter of decomposing phthalates found in plastic. Together with Miranda Wang, a fellow student from the University of British Columbia, Yao is developing a bacteria that can break down ocean-bound plastic waste. More precisely, the two women are trying to find a way to break down harmful phthalates, which used in plastic because they increase flexibility, durability and transparency. Classified by the EPA as a top priority pollutant, at least 470 million pounds of these phthalates contaminate our air, soil and water each year. When acting as a hormone disruptor they can cause cancer and birth defects. 

Having first worked on the problem in high school, the young duo have since filed two patents and founded a company. They invented a proprietary chemical recycling technology that breaks down previously unrecyclable plastic into valuable base chemicals, and their startup BioCellection turns each tonne of plastic trash into more than US$2,500 worth of chemicals and prevents 20 tonnes of carbon dioxide from being emitted.

Jenna Jambeck
Environmental engineer, USA

Growing up in rural Minnesota, where there was no garbage collection, Jenna Jambeck used to borrow a truck to take her family’s trash to the dump every week. That’s when her interest in waste started. Understanding where trash comes from, how it gets managed, where it ends up after it’s collected and most crucially how it ends up en route to the sea, is the focus of Jambeck’s celebrated 20 year career as an environmental engineer and National Geographic Fellow. Working with a team of scientists at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis in California, Jambeck has released a seminal paper, published in 2015 in the journal Science that’s proved integral to understanding what we’re up against: between 4.8 and 12.7 million metric tonnes of plastic entered the world’s oceans that year. Since then, Jambeck's findings helped galvanise a worldwide movement to stop plastic pollution. Today an associate professor at the University of Georgia College of Engineering, Jambeck co-created Marine Debris Tracker, which allows users to report seaside litter anywhere in the world. Since the app’s 2010 introduction, thousands of people have kept one million pieces of trash from hitting the waves.

Tabassum Mumtaz
Scientist, Bangladesh

Tabassum Mumtaz is Chief Scientific Officer of the Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission and has just been awarded the 2019 OWSD-Elsevier Foundation Award for her work on bioconversion of waste byproducts and biomass into more environmentally-friendly compounds. Dr. Mumtaz cultivates bacteria that can turn wastewater and food waste, such as effluents from palm oil production, into sustainable bioplastics.

“Winning the OWSD-Elsevier Foundation Award is like receiving an Oscar to me. This will be a tremendous inspiration to me and to all women scientists in Bangladesh and in the Asia-Pacific region, to dream big and to do research beneficial to the environment and society.” — Tabassum Mumtaz

Nancy Knowlton
Coral Reef Biologist, USA

Nancy Knowlton’s research interests lie in determining the biodiversity of coral reefs and in protecting these fragile habitats. Her work has taken her across the tropics, from the Caribbean to the Cape Verde Islands, and from the Red Sea to the remote reefs of the Central Pacific. The Census of Marine Life project, of which Knowlton is a partner, is striving to find standardised and easily automated methods to take a global census of the biodiversity of coral reefs and results so far suggest the diversity is truly enormous. Knowlton’s current research uses state-of-the-art genetic methods combined with globally standardised sampling to explore the hidden diversity that has been ignored by traditional approaches. And this is a race against time as increasing ocean temperatures and acidification are devastating coral reefs around the world.