Early Life
Shirley Ann Jackson is a prominent physicist and university president who was born on August 5, 1946, in Washington, D.C. to George Hiter Jackson and Beatrice Cosby Jackson. Growing up, her mother would read her the biography of Benjamin Banneker, an African American scientist and mathematician who helped build Washington, D.C., and her father encouraged her interest in science by assisting her with projects for school. The Space Race of the late-1950s would also have an impact on Jackson as a child, spurring her interest in scientific investigation.
She attended Roosevelt High School in Washington, D.C., where she took accelerated math and science classes. Jackson graduated as valedictorian in 1964 and encouraged by the assistant principal for boys at her high school, she applied to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She was among the first African American students to attend MIT, and in her undergraduate class, she was one of only two women.

Her Early Academic Career
Shirley Jackson found strength in academic work and immersed herself in research, recording her equations in a large artist’s sketchbook that dwarfed the standard notebooks used by other theoretical physicists.
By 1973, she had completed a doctoral degree in particle physics, the first woman to receive a Ph.D. in physics in MIT’s history. Her dissertation described a new way to model complex collisions. The thesis, titled ‘the Study of a Multi-peripheral Model with Continued Cross-Channel Unitarity’, under the supervision of James Young, the first African American tenured full professor in the physics department at MIT. In 1975, the thesis was published in Annals of Physics.

In 1974, after receiving her degree, Jackson was recruited as a research associate in theoretical physics at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, or Fermilab. At Fermilab, she studied medium to large subatomic particles, specifically hadrons, a subatomic particle with a strong nuclear force. Throughout the 1970s, Jackson would work in this area on Landau theories of charge density waves in one- and two-dimensions, as well as Tang-Mills gauge theories and neutrino reactions. Shirley Jackson served as visiting science associate at the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Switzerland and worked on theories of strongly interacting elementary particles. In 1975, she returned to Fermilab and was simultaneously elected to the MIT Corporation’s Board of Trustees.
She became a member of the MIT Corporation in 1975 and is now a lifetime member. “I understood universities from the point of view of oversight and from the point of view of the faculty, in terms of how to organize research.”
In 1976, she accepted a position at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey, where she switched research areas and focused on the electronic properties of two-dimensional condensed matter systems. “Shirley was very intelligent mathematically and made the transition successfully to a new field, which is not something too many people do,” says Patrick Lee ’66, Ph.D. ’70, a colleague at Bell Labs and now a professor of physics at MIT. “It gives you an idea of her flexibility and breadth of interest.”

While she was at Bell Labs, Shirley collaborated with Lee and others on research related to charge density waves, which describe how electrons organize themselves within layered crystals. The group was interested in how these electrons behave in areas where one layer of a crystal meets another. They focused in particular on how electrons cluster in repeated patterns, “with a particular kind of bunching effect,” as Lee puts it. They also modeled how these bunching patterns would change with variations in temperature—and how those changes would affect the properties of the material.

In 1991, she served as a professor at Rutgers while working for AT&T Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey. In 1995, she was appointed by President Clinton to the chair of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. In 1997, she led the formation of the International Nuclear Regulators Association. In 1998, Shirley was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame; the following year, she became the eighteenth president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She remains an advocate for women and minorities in the sciences and, since 2001, has brought needed attention to the “Quiet Crisis” of America’s predicted inability to innovate in the face of a looming scientific workforce shortage.

Recognition from President Clinton
Her great work did not go unnoticed. In 1994, she got a call from the White House; President Bill Clinton wanted her to serve as chair of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. She accepted, even though it meant giving up her tenured position at Rutgers and spending the work week away from her husband, physicist Morris Washington, and their son, Alan, who was just starting high school. As head of the NRC, Shirley developed and implemented regulation for assessing risk at the country’s nuclear power plants. Her approach took advantage of sophisticated computer modeling—much of it pioneered at MIT—to make probability-based judgments about the likelihood of various problems. For instance, if a power plant operator wanted to make physical changes to the plant or operate it differently, regulators could more accurately predict the relative risks of those changes. Victor McCree, who joined Jackson’s staff at the commission in 1996 and is currently its executive director for operations, says the new approach was “probably the most significant philosophical and practical change in the history of the NRC.”

Shirley also led international efforts to promote nuclear safety, working in places including post-apartheid South Africa and the countries of the former Soviet Union. “My first year as chairman, I went to Chernobyl and that focuses the attention.” Nearly a decade after the 1986 accident, the site still had high radiation levels emanating from the destroyed reactor and radioactive contamination in a broad area around the plant. She and her team “helped the Ukrainians figure out what to do and how to seal this thing up,” helping to train regulators and inspectors in the region. She also oversaw the creation of the International Nuclear Regulators Association, which supports nuclear regulation around the world.

Her Later Academic Career
Sequel to her stint at the NRC, she returned to academia in 1999 as president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. As the sixth person to serve as president in 14 years, she aimed to transform RPI into a world-class technological research university. She was ready, having already served on the boards of Rutgers and MIT.

Her efforts to reshape the university met with relative difficulties. In 2006, she prevailed in a vote of no confidence by a small margin. She said the faculty was concerned about tighter criteria and higher expectations for promotion and tenure, among other things. In a separate struggle, her administration suspended the faculty senate in 2007. The Board of Trustees had asked the Senate to amend its constitution to limit its membership, resulting in an impasse; the Senate was then reconstituted in 2012.

From 2009 to 2014, she served on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) for President Obama; in 2014 she became co-chair of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, serving until early 2017. In these positions, she led a study on advanced manufacturing in the United States and got involved with issues of national and global security, cyber-security, and digital technology.“She has a broad view of how science and technology can assist our country and the world,” says Gates, who served with Jackson on PCAST. In 2016, President Barack Obama gave her the ‘National Medal of Science’ award.

In 2017, Standard & Poor’s lowered the university’s long-term bond rating from A- to BBB+, citing its high debt burden and low level of available resources. But RPI maintains an A3 bond rating with Moody’s, and her plans to shore up the university’s finances with a capital campaign launched this past fall. The new campaign follows her successful Renaissance at Rensselaer campaign, which had risen to over $1 billion by 2008 in support of her vision for RPI, known as the Rensselaer Plan.

Shirley Ann Jackson was described as a ‘national treasure’ who defied a lot of odds to acquire all her achievements. She is a rare gem and will forever be remembered in the world of scientific academy. She gave words of encouragement to students, including one who worried that maybe she was there because of affirmative action. “If you are here, a door opened for you,” she told the student, noting that doors open for many reasons. “What happens now is a function of what you do.”

When stories of successful women in architecture are shared in Africa, there is no doubt that Olajumoke Adenowo will be considered an important figure. A woman of substance who has thrived on her passion for design, Olajumoke has made a name for herself in the African society.

She was born in the city of Ibadan, South West Nigeria in 1968. Guided by her mother, Professor Olufunmilayo Oloruntimilehin, an expert in the field of criminology, she built her passion and abilities in a onetime “Male – dominated” profession, irrespective of the prevalent socio-cultural norms and values at the time.

Being privileged to visit Europe with her parents during her younger years, she was intrigued by what she saw at the historical sites in Europe which left a mark in her heart. She made a decision to build a career in designing.

Olajumoke had her secondary school education at the Federal Government Girls College (FGGC), Oyo, and proceeded to Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) – Nigeria, for her Bachelor of Science degree in Architecture.

She was fourteen when she began her undergraduate course at OAU and at nineteen; she earned her Bachelor of Science in architecture, she also obtained an M.Sc from her Alma Mater OAU.

She is an alumnus of the Yale School of Management, Lagos Business School Chief Executive Programme and the IESE Business School at the University of Navarra in Barcelona, Spain.

Her career in architecture began shortly after she obtained her M.Sc., working as an associate architect at Towry Coker Associates, before long she moved to Femi Majekodunmi Associates as a full-time architect. While working at Femi Majekodunmi Associates she leverage on the platform, to develop herself, known for her enthusiasm and attitude of readiness for the job. She devoted time and energy to building the firm’s status and promoting the Nigerian culture through uniqueness voiced from her work.

Olajumoke’s passion for her job was an aura that was noticeable and glaring to the eyes of all which led her to greater achievements in life. At the age of 23 she was given the opportunity to design her first building and in the same year many other opportunities opened up for her.

She was tagged the “face of architecture in the Nigeria” and is also the brain behind the designing of the iconic structure of Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Finance in Abuja which catapulted her career to its peak. Having achieved quite much in her career, she decided to spread her tentacles into the entrepreneurship world. She had worked with other firms and was faithful in another man’s business but she considered having her own firm.

After much consideration, Olajumoke moved to establish her own firm – AD Consulting in 1994. AD Consulting is an interior design and architecture firm whose projects covers both private and public facilities design.

AD Consulting has handled the designing and constructing of over 70 outstanding projects including governments, private and multinational companies such as L’Oréal International, Guaranty Trust Bank in West Africa, and Coco-Cola International. Olajumoke also ran an oil and gas firm, Advantage Energy, and a property management firm.

She is also the founder of Awesome Treasures Foundation, which she established with the aim of meeting the demands of national development via raising transformational leaders who would spur inventions and innovations in all areas of life.

The establishment of Awesome Treasures Foundation attracted a name to her which is the first female pioneer of interdenominational, denominationally independent Christian Ministry in Africa.

Olajumoke is not just a model but a trailblazer to the African women society. Following her track record of achievements in a patriarchal continent like Africa, she has been recognized with various awards including the International Alliance for Women World of Difference 100 Award, the Rare Gems 2007 Award, which is awarded by the Women’s Optimum Development Foundation (WODEF).

Olajumoke is happily married to Olukorede Adenowo and they are blessed with two sons.

Phyllis Wise is one of the very special women in academia who has made history and smashed stereotypes as a result of her exceptional works of science. Speaking of exception, she remains the first woman and the first Asian American to serve as president of the University of Washington (UW).

Wise is the daughter of two excellent educationalists, who left China to the United States to pursue their education in 1938 before the World War 2 began. She was born and raised in New York City, her parents were education enthusiasts and they instilled educational enthusiasm in her.

Wise’s father had an MD from Beijing Union Medical College and a doctorate degree from Northwestern University. Her mother who was an educationist also graduated with a nursing degree from Yenching University, Beijing, and on getting to the US she pursued a teaching nursing education degree at Columbia Teacher’s College.

Growing up as a young child she was surrounded by lots of scientific activities performed by her father who was a neuroscientist. Often times Wise was taken to her father’s lab to watch him as he experiments, this explains how she got so attached to Science at a very tender age.

Wise grew up to love education and her parents were her backbone. Although her father had wanted her to become a medical doctor, Wise took another path to the top and she has fulfilled her parent’s expectations for her.

She received a bachelor’s degree in biology from Swarthmore College in 1967, and in 1969 she obtained her master’s degree and then pushed forward for a doctorate in zoology from the University of Michigan in 1972.

Wise became a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan for two years (1972–1974). She was awarded honorary degrees from Swarthmore College in 2008 and the University of Birmingham in 2015.

In 2008, the Puget Sound Business Journal named her one of its 2008 Women of Influence.

However, it hadn’t been all rosy for Wise; she had her struggles and difficulties climbing up the ladder. Especially being a woman and an Asian American, all eyes were on her to see how far she could go.

But Alas! She moved upward and even forward at every point in time.

Wise took her very steps in education from1976, when she was appointed Assistant Professor of physiology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore.

Moving forward, in 1993, she was appointed a professor of physiology and chair of the department at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, Kentucky.

In 2002, she became Dean of the College of Biological Sciences at University of California-Davis, holding also the rank of Distinguished Professor of Neurobiology, Physiology, and Behavior in its College of Biological Sciences, and Professor of Physiology and Membrane Biology in its School of Medicine.

As she continued her journey in the academic sector she was made Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at the University of Washington in 2005.

Her outstanding record catapulted her towards academic leadership when need be that an interim president was required, so she took the position of the President of UW and she served from 2010-2011. One of her most profound accomplishment at the University of Washington was the establishment of the College of the Environment which she led during her service. The College brought together several previously abandoned programs and gave them a place in the university priorities and budget allocations.

When the university board found a permanent president, Wise was placed back as the Provost and Executive Vice President.

But during the same period, she was offered the position of Chancellor at one of the largest public universities in the United States─ the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and Vice President of the University of Illinois with an annual budget of $1.5 billion, $400 million in research expenditures, 42,000 students, and more than 1,800 tenure-track faculty members.

Wise resigned as the School Chancellor in August 2015, having served for almost five years.

Her works in science focus principally on the effect of hormones on the feminine brain during the process of development, adulthood, and aging. Her research uncovered the diverse actions of estrogens on the brain, including its protective effects after stroke injury. She was funded by the NIH for 32 consecutive years during which she received two 10-year MERIT awards, and led center and program project grants.

Dr. Wise is author or co-author of over 200 articles and research papers in endocrinology.

She is known and celebrated for her outstanding research work in the field of science up till date, she also has a record of great philanthropic works including; donating all her compensation from serving as a board of director in Nike to student’s scholarships.