Description:

During the academic year, the department of psychology invites respected scholars to give lectures on research and theory in contemporary psychology. Please see the schedule below for more details and room locations. All are welcome to attend and engage with the Northwestern Psychology Community.

*Currently colloquiums are being held both via zoom & in-person, presentations are on Friday afternoons, 3:15pm to 4:30pm CST

December
Friday, December 10th, 2021, 3:15 pm

Speaker: Dani Bassett, University of Pennsylvania

Topic: Racial, Ethnic, and Gender Imbalances in Reference Lists of Scientific Papers

Abstract: In recent years, science has been pushed to grapple with the social and structural systems that produce vast gender and racial/ethnic imbalances in academic participation. While current discussions largely focus on the role of people in positions of power (e.g., journal editors, grant reviewers and agencies, department chairs, and society presidents), many imbalances are in fact perpetuated by researchers themselves. A key example is imbalance within citation practices, where people from marginalized groups are broadly undercited, precluding an unbiased trajectory of scientific discovery. Because of the downstream effects that citations can have on visibility and career advancement, understanding and eliminating bias in citation practices is vital for addressing inequity in our scientific community. Here I will describe our recent studies providing evidence of striking (and growing) gender and racial/ethnic imbalances in reference lists of STEM articles, and evaluate several candidate drivers of those imbalances. I will also discuss practical (and open-access) tools for the mitigation of disparity. 

Bio: Prof. Bassett is the J. Peter Skirkanich Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, with appointments in the Departments of Bioengineering, Electrical & Systems Engineering, Physics & Astronomy, Neurology, and Psychiatry. They are also an external professor of the Santa Fe Institute. Bassett is most well-known for blending neural and systems engineering to identify fundamental mechanisms of cognition and disease in human brain networks. They received a B.S. in physics from Penn State University and a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Cambridge, UK as a Churchill Scholar, and as an NIH Health Sciences Scholar. Following a postdoctoral position at UC Santa Barbara, Bassett was a Junior Research Fellow at the Sage Center for the Study of the Mind. They have received multiple prestigious awards, including American Psychological Association's ‘Rising Star’ (2012), Alfred P Sloan Research Fellow (2014), MacArthur Fellow Genius Grant (2014), Early Academic Achievement Award from the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (2015), Harvard Higher Education Leader (2015), Office of Naval Research Young Investigator (2015), National Science Foundation CAREER (2016), Popular Science Brilliant 10 (2016), Lagrange Prize in Complex Systems Science (2017), Erdos-Renyi Prize in Network Science (2018), OHBM Young Investigator Award (2020), AIMBE College of Fellows (2020). Bassett is the author of more than 300 peer-reviewed publications, which have garnered over 32,000 citations, as well as numerous book chapters and teaching materials. Bassett’s work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Army Research Office, the Army Research Laboratory, the Office of Naval Research, the Department of Defense, the Alfred P Sloan Foundation, the John D and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation, the Paul Allen Foundation, the ISI Foundation, and the Center for Curiosity.

Location: LIVE via zoom

About Dani Bassett