Lecture series honoring Denice Denton planned for Sept. 12
Nancy Hopkins, Amgen, Inc. Professor of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), will deliver the first lecture in the Denice D. Denton Distinguished Lecture Series.
The series is sponsored by the Women in Science and Engineering Leadership Institute (WISELI), the Denice Denton Memorial Fund and the Office of the Chancellor. Hopkins will address the topic of “Women in Science (1971-2008): The Path to the Top.”
The event is scheduled for Friday, Sept. 12, at the Ebling Symposium Center in the Microbial Sciences Building, 1550 Linden Drive, and is open to the public. The lecture will begin at 3 p.m. and will be preceded by a 2:30 p.m. reception. No registration is required.
Hopkins is on the faculty of the David H. Koch Institute for Innovative Cancer Research at MIT. Since 1994, she has been working to promote women in science.
In 1995, she was appointed chair of the first Committee on Women in Faculty in MIT’s School of Science. In 1999, a summary of the findings of her committee, published in the MIT faculty newsletter, came to be known as the MIT Report on Women in Science and was widely read across the U.S. In 2001, she was appointed co-chair of the first Council on Faculty Diversity at MIT.
Hopkins is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.
The Committee Honoring Denice’s Memory is continuing to raise funds to support the lecture series and student scholarships. It is hosting a fund-raising dinner on Thursday evening, Sept. 11, at the University Club.
In July 2007, the committee held a memorial symposium in honor of Denton, who was a professor of electrical and computer engineering at UW–Madison from 1987-1996. She moved on to become dean of the University of Washington College of Engineering, and in 2005 she was named chancellor of the University of California-Santa Cruz, the position she held at the time of her death on June 24, 2006.
The second lecture in the series is already scheduled for Nov. 2, 2009. Joan C. Williams, a distinguished professor of law at the University of California-Hastings, has been invited to speak. She is an expert on work/family issues and the author of “Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What to Do About It.”
