Wikipedia

Jess Wade

Jessica Alice Feinmann Wade BEM (born October 1988)[5] is a British physicist in the Blackett Laboratory at Imperial College London, specialising in Raman spectroscopy.[6] Her research investigates polymer-based organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs).[3][7][8][9] Her public engagement work in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) advocates for women in physics[10] as well as tackling systemic biases such as gender and racial bias on Wikipedia.[11][12][13]

Jess Wade
BEM
Jess Wade in 2017
Born
Jessica Alice Feinmann Wade

October 1988 (age 36)[5]
Manchester, England
EducationSouth Hampstead High School
Chelsea College of Arts
Alma materImperial College London (MSc, PhD)
Known forPlastic electronics
Public engagement
WISE Campaigning
Awards
Scientific career
FieldsMaterials science
Chiral materials
Circular polarisation[3]
InstitutionsImperial College London
ThesisNanometrology for controlling and probing organic semiconductors and devices (2016)
Doctoral advisorJi-Seon Kim[4]
Websitewww.imperial.ac.uk/people/jessica.wade Edit this at Wikidata

Early life and education

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Wade is the daughter of two physicians.[14][15] Her grandfather Leslie Feinmann was also a physician who was born in a Jewish ghetto in Manchester to a Russian-speaking mother and a father of Lithuanian Jewish and German Jewish descent.[16][17][18][failed verification] She was privately educated at South Hampstead High School, graduating in 2007. Wade subsequently enrolled in a foundation course in art and design at the Chelsea College of Art and Design,[19] and in 2012 completed a Master of Science (MSci) degree in physics at Imperial College London. She continued at Imperial, completing her PhD in physics in 2016,[4][20] where her work in nanometrology in organic semiconductors was supervised by Ji-Seon Kim.[4]

Research and career

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Wade's research interests are in materials science, chiral materials and circular polarisation.[3] As of 2020, Wade is a postdoctoral research associate in plastic electronics in the solid-state physics group at Imperial College London, focusing on developing and characterising light-emitting polymer thin films,[21][9] working with Alasdair Campbell[8] and Matthew Fuchter.[22] Wade and coworkers have recently discovered how to template chiral materials at functional interfaces,[23] paving the way toward tunable chiroptical technologies.

As of November 2022, according to Web of Science, she has published 59 items and been cited 1,124 times.[24]

Public engagement

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Wade has contributed to public engagement to increase gender equality in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects. She represented the UK on the United States Department of State funded International Visitor Leadership Program Hidden No More,[25] and served on the WISE Campaign Young Women's Board and Women's Engineering Society (WES) Council, working with teachers across the country through the Stimulating Physics Network (including keynote talks at education fairs and teacher conferences). Wade has been critical of expensive campaigns to encourage girls into science where there is an implication that only a small minority would be interested, or that girls can study the "chemical composition of lipsticks and nail varnish".[14][26] She estimates that £5m or £6m is spent in the UK to promote a scientific career for women but with little measurement of the results.[14]

Wade coordinated a team for the 6th International Women in Physics Conference, resulting in an invitation to discuss the Institute of Physics (IOP) gender balance work in Germany.[27] She also supports the engagement of school students through school activities and festivals, and the organisation of a series of events for girls at Imperial College London, which she has funded with grants from the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng), the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) and the Biochemical Society.[28] In 2015 Wade won the science engagement activity I'm a Scientist, Get me out of here![29] and received £500, which she used to run a greenlight4girls day in the Department of Physics at Imperial College London.[30] She has also written a children's book on materials and nanoscience called Nano: The Spectacular Science of the Very (Very) Small. The book is illustrated by Melissa Castrillón and is published by Walker Books.[31]

Wade serves on the IOP London and South East Committee,[32] the IOP Women in Physics Committee[33] and the Juno transparency and opportunity committee at Imperial.[34] She cites her influences as Sharmadean Reid, Lesley Cohen, Jenny Nelson[6] and Angela Saini, particularly her book Inferior.[14] Her outreach work has been covered by NPR,[35] the BBC,[36][37] Sky News,[38] HuffPost,[26] ABC News,[39] Physics World,[10] El País,[40] CNN,[41] Nature,[2][42] New Scientist,[43] and The Guardian.[14][44][45]

Wade was interviewed as part of TEDx London Women, held on 1 December 2018.[46][47] With Ben Britton and Christopher Jackson, she co-authored "The reward and risk of social media for academics" in the journal Nature Reviews Chemistry.[48]

Wikipedia contributions

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See also: Gender bias on Wikipedia

Wade has made a large contribution to a Wikipedia campaign that encourages the creation of Wikipedia articles about notable female academics, in order to promote female role models in STEM.[49][40][41] Wade has created new Wikipedia biographical articles to raise the profile of minorities in STEM.[50][12][11][51] As of February 2020, she had written over 900 biographies on Wikipedia.[52] By January 2021, this figure had risen to 1,200.[35] By February 2024, it was over 2,100.[53]

On 12 April 2019, The Washington Post published an op-ed titled "The black hole photo is just one example of championing women in science",[54] co-authored by Zaringhalam and Wade, advocating for increased recognition for women who contribute to science. After the first image of a black hole was released, media coverage celebrated Katie Bouman's role leading the creation of the image processing algorithm.[55] The op-ed emphasized the power of social media like Twitter and collaborative information repositories like Wikipedia for crediting women's scientific contributions.

As an example of insufficient coverage in the English-language Wikipedia of women in science, the article points to the deletion of the biography of Clarice Phelps.[56] Wade created a short Wikipedia biography of Phelps in September 2018.[57] The deletion of that article on 11 February 2019[58] led to a prolonged editorial discussion and its repeated restoration and re-deletion.[59] Katrina Krämer wrote in Chemistry World:[60]

In Phelps' case, her name didn’t appear in the articles announcing tennessine's discovery. She wasn't profiled by mainstream media. Most mentions of her work are on her employer's website – a source that's not classed as independent by Wikipedia standards and therefore not admissible when it comes to establishing notability. The [Wikipedia] community consensus was that her biography had to go.

Wade told Chemistry World she believes such omissions of scientific researchers from coverage in Wikipedia are regrettable, stating her impression that it accepts entries for even the most obscure popular-media figures.[60] By January 2020, there was a consensus to restore the article, as by then new sources had become available.[61] As of 2019, of the 600 articles about female scientists Wade had written, 6 had been deleted for not meeting Wikipedia's criteria for notability.[60]

Awards and honours

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Wade has received several awards for contributions to science, science communication, diversity, and inclusion. In 2015, Wade was awarded the Institute of Physics Early Career Physics Communicator Prize[62] and the Imperial College Union award for contribution to college life,[63] and was the winner of the Colour Zone in I'm a Scientist, Get Me Out of Here, an online science engagement project run by Mangorolla CIC.[64] The next year, Wade received the Institute of Physics's Jocelyn Bell Burnell Medal and Prize for Women in Physics 2016.[20]

In 2017, Wade won the Robert Perrin Award for Materials Science[65][66] from the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining, and Imperial College's Julia Higgins Medal in recognition of her work to support gender equality.[67][68] She was invited to the interdisciplinary science conference Science Foo Camp at the Googleplex in California.[69]

In 2018, Wade won the Daphne Jackson Medal and Prize for "acting as an internationally-recognised ambassador for STEM".[28] In December she was named as one of Nature's 10 people who mattered in science that year.[2] She received an honourable mention in the Wikimedian of the Year award by Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, for her "year long effort to write about underrepresented scientists and engineers on Wikipedia",[70] and the following year was chosen as Wikimedian of the Year by her national chapter, Wikimedia UK.[71]

Wade was awarded the British Empire Medal (BEM) in the 2019 Birthday Honours for services to gender diversity in science.[1][72] Her employer honoured her that year with its Leadership Award for Societal Engagement.[73] Also in 2019, Wade was named as the 44th "Most Influential Woman in UK Tech" by Computer Weekly.[74] During the same year, Casio released a scientific calculator in Spain bearing Wade's picture in a series of 12 calculators commemorating historically notable female scientists.[75]

In 2023, she was one of the six women chosen by Nature to comment on their plans for International Women's Day. The others were Gihan Kamel, Martina Anto-Ocrah, Sandra Diaz, Aster Gebrekirstos and Tanya Monro.[76]

In 2024, Wade received a University Research Fellowship (URF) and the Rosalind Franklin Award from the Royal Society for "her achievements in functional materials and outstanding project which will support early career women scientists to pursue academic careers in materials sciences".[77]

References

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  1. ^ a b "No. 62666". The London Gazette (Supplement). 8 June 2019. p. B30.
  2. ^ a b c Gibney, Elizabeth; Callaway, Ewen; Cyranoski, David; Gaind, Nisha; Tollefson, Jeff; Courtland, Rachel; Law, Yao-Hua; Maher, Brendan; Else, Holly; Castelvecchi, Davide (2018). "Ten people who mattered this year". Nature. 564 (7736): 325–335. doi:10.1038/d41586-018-07683-5. PMID 30563976.
  3. ^ a b c Jess Wade publications indexed by Google Scholar  
  4. ^ a b c Wade, Jessica Alice Feinmann (2016). Nanometrology for controlling and probing organic semiconductors and devices. imperial.ac.uk (PhD thesis). hdl:10044/1/56219. OCLC 1065331693. EThOS uk.bl.ethos.733084. Archived from the original on 14 September 2020. Retrieved 31 July 2018.  
  5. ^ a b Anon (2022). "Jessica Alice Feinmann WADE". gov.uk. London: Companies House. Archived from the original on 24 October 2022. Retrieved 23 October 2022.
  6. ^ a b "Jess Wade profile Diverse@Imperial". 2018. Archived from the original on 16 July 2018.
  7. ^ Jess Wade publications from Europe PubMed Central
  8. ^ a b "Dr Jessica Wade: Faculty of Natural Sciences, Department of Physics". imperial.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 18 May 2018.
  9. ^ a b Jess Wade publications indexed by the Scopus bibliographic database. (subscription required)
  10. ^ a b Tesh, Sarah; Wade, Jess (2017). "Look happy dear, you've just made a discovery". Physics World. 30 (9): 31–33. Bibcode:2017PhyW...30i..31T. doi:10.1088/2058-7058/30/9/35. ISSN 0953-8585.  
  11. ^ a b Wade, Jessica (2019). "This is why I've written 500 biographies of female scientists on Wikipedia". independent.co.uk. The Independent. Archived from the original on 8 June 2022.
  12. ^ a b Curtis, Cara (2019). "This physicist has written over 500 biographies of women scientists on Wikipedia". thenextweb.com. The Next Web. Archived from the original on 4 August 2019. Retrieved 10 June 2019. Out of the 700 entries Wade has published so far, six biographies have been removed.
  13. ^ O’Reilly, Nicola (2019). "Why we're creating Wikipedia profiles for BAME scientists". Nature. doi:10.1038/d41586-019-00812-8. ISSN 0028-0836. S2CID 150864233. Archived from the original on 2 August 2020. Retrieved 29 June 2020.
  14. ^ a b c d e Devlin, Hannah (24 July 2018). "Academic writes 270 Wikipedia pages in a year to get female scientists noticed". The Guardian. London. Archived from the original on 29 June 2020. Retrieved 24 July 2018.
  15. ^ Highfield, Roger; Wade, Jess (4 July 2019). "We're all to blame for Wikipedia's huge sexism problem". Wired. Archived from the original on 2 August 2019. Retrieved 4 July 2019.
  16. ^ "Elozor Leslie Feinmann | RCP Museum". Archived from the original on 13 October 2022. Retrieved 12 October 2022.
  17. ^ "Dr Jess Wade 👩🏻‍🔬 on Twitter: "My grandfather "born into a Jewish ghetto in Manchester, of a 🇷🇺 speaking mother + 🇱🇹 🇩🇪 father" #1DayWithoutUs" / Twitter". 12 October 2022. Archived from the original on 12 October 2022. Retrieved 1 October 2023.
  18. ^ "SHHS Motivational Monday: Scientist Dr Jess Wade | News | South Hampstead High School". shhs.gdst.net. 2018. Archived from the original on 19 August 2018. Retrieved 22 February 2018.
  19. ^ "A Day in the Life of a Physicist at Imperial College, London". Independent School Parent. 30 October 2017. Archived from the original on 1 May 2019. Retrieved 17 July 2018.
  20. ^ a b "Early career researcher wins the Jocelyn Bell Burnell Medal and Prize". iop.org. Institute of Physics. 2016. Archived from the original on 1 May 2019. Retrieved 31 January 2018.
  21. ^ "Experimental Solid State Physics – Research groups". imperial.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 4 December 2015. Retrieved 17 July 2018.
  22. ^ Wade, Jess; Campbell, Alasadair; Wan, Li; Fuchter, Matthew; So, Franky; Adachi, Chihaya; Kim, Jang-Joo (2018). "Strong induced chiroptical effects in light emitting polymer blends (Conference Presentation)". In So, Franky; Adachi, Chihaya; Kim, Jang-Joo (eds.). Organic Light Emitting Materials and Devices XXII. p. 9. doi:10.1117/12.2321171. ISBN 9781510620438. S2CID 139451421.
  23. ^ Wade, Jess; Salerno, Francesco; Kilbride, Rachel C. (2022). "Controlling anisotropic properties by manipulating the orientation of chiral small molecules". Nature Chemistry. 14 (12): 1383–1389. Bibcode:2022NatCh..14.1383W. doi:10.1038/s41557-022-01044-6. hdl:10044/1/99670. PMID 36302869. S2CID 253183615.
  24. ^ Web Of Science, accessed 1 November 2022. Note that WOS returns J Wade and JF Wade in a simple search for "Wade, Jessica".
  25. ^ "Fox's 'Hidden Figures' inspires historic State Department program to support women in STEM around the world". Impact.21.cf.com. 2 November 2017. Archived from the original on 11 January 2019. Retrieved 22 February 2018.
  26. ^ a b Amatulli, Jenna (25 July 2018). "This Physicist Wants Female Scientists To Get Noticed. So She Wrote 270 Wikipedia Profiles". Huffingtonpost.co.uk. Archived from the original on 1 February 2019. Retrieved 31 July 2018.
  27. ^ "Program of 21. Deutsche Physikerinnentagung (21st German Conference of Female Physicists)" (PDF). German Physical Society. Archived (PDF) from the original on 9 October 2018. Retrieved 9 October 2018.
  28. ^ a b "2018 Daphne Jackson Medal and Prize". Institute of Physics. Archived from the original on 3 August 2020. Retrieved 23 February 2018.
  29. ^ "And the winner is... – Colour Zone". imascientist.org.uk. 2015. Archived from the original on 19 August 2018. Retrieved 16 August 2018.
  30. ^ Wade, Jess (2015). "G4G DAY @ Imperial College London". makingphysicsfun.com. Archived from the original on 17 August 2018. Retrieved 16 August 2018.
  31. ^ "Walker Books – Nano: The Spectacular Science of the Very (Very) Small". walker.co.uk. Retrieved 9 October 2023.
  32. ^ "IOP London and South East Committee". iop.org. Institute of Physics. 2018. Archived from the original on 19 August 2018. Retrieved 23 February 2018.
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  34. ^ "Juno Committee". Imperial College London. Archived from the original on 20 August 2020. Retrieved 23 February 2018.
  35. ^ a b Kwong, Emily (6 January 2021). "One Page At A Time, Jess Wade Is Changing Wikipedia". Short Wave (Podcast). NPR. Archived from the original on 8 January 2021. Retrieved 6 January 2021.
  36. ^ Jackson, Marie; Scott, Jennifer (2018). "Women in science: 'We want to be accepted into the club'". bbc.co.uk. BBC News. Archived from the original on 11 December 2020. Retrieved 17 December 2018.
  37. ^ "Cartoon by Jess Wade – Biased Science, as interpreted and illustrated by audience member Jess Wade – The Everyday Effect of Unconscious Bias, All in the Mind". bbc.co.uk. BBC Radio 4. Archived from the original on 3 March 2020. Retrieved 31 July 2018.
  38. ^ "Dr Jess Wade on Twitter". Twitter. Archived from the original on 19 August 2018. Retrieved 31 July 2018.
  39. ^ "This researcher writes Wikipedia pages for women in science". abcnews.go.com. ABC News. 26 July 2018. Archived from the original on 23 November 2020. Retrieved 31 July 2018.
  40. ^ a b Martín, Bruno (8 July 2018). "La mujer que añade una científica cada día a la Wikipedia". elpais.com (in Spanish). El País. ISSN 1134-6582. Archived from the original on 15 August 2020. Retrieved 10 July 2018.
  41. ^ a b Zdanowicz, Christina (2018). "A physicist has written more than 280 Wikipedia entries to elevate women in science". cnn.com. CNN. Archived from the original on 23 November 2020. Retrieved 27 July 2018.
  42. ^ Wade, Jess; Zaringhalam, Maryam (2018). "Why we're editing women scientists onto Wikipedia". Nature. Springer Nature. doi:10.1038/d41586-018-05947-8. S2CID 186774096. Archived from the original on 11 December 2019. Retrieved 17 December 2018.
  43. ^ Howgego, Joshua. "Jess Wade's one-woman mission to diversify Wikipedia's science stories". New Scientist. Archived from the original on 2 August 2020. Retrieved 29 June 2020.
  44. ^ Charman-Anderson, Suw (25 July 2018). "Five amazing female scientists you've probably never heard of – Suw Charman-Anderson". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 11 November 2020. Retrieved 31 July 2018.
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  46. ^ "TEDxLondonWomen #ShowingUp". Archived from the original on 1 October 2020. Retrieved 15 January 2019.
  47. ^ A voice for diversity in science Archived 11 May 2020 at the Wayback Machine Video of Wade's TEDxLondonWomen interview 1 December 2018
  48. ^ Wade, Jessica; Jackson, Chris; Britton, Ben (18 July 2019). "The reward and risk of social media for academics". Nature Reviews Chemistry. 3 (8): 459–461. doi:10.1038/s41570-019-0121-3. hdl:10044/1/71949. ISSN 2397-3358. S2CID 198137018.  
  49. ^ "Jess Wade – CSHL WiSE". cshlwise.org. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Harbour. 2017. Archived from the original on 20 August 2020. Retrieved 18 June 2018.
  50. ^ "Why are so few women biographies included in Wikipedia?". BBC Newsday. 25 July 2019. Archived from the original on 3 August 2019. Retrieved 28 July 2019. She's been writing biographies of women and other minorities in science and engineering since 2017 and adds a new entry almost on a daily basis.
  51. ^ Zane, Zachary (2 January 2019). "This Scientist Is Updating Wikipedia with Women, POC, & LGBTQ+ History". pride.com. Archived from the original on 20 August 2020. Retrieved 2 January 2019.
  52. ^ "Physicist writes 900 Wikipedia entries to boost diversity in science". ITV News. 11 February 2020. Archived from the original on 27 May 2020. Retrieved 13 February 2020.
  53. ^ Gill, Victoria (8 February 2024). "Ancient Roman Writings Revealed". BBC Inside Science.
  54. ^ Zaringhalam, Maryam; Wade, Jess (12 April 2019). "The black hole photo is just one example of championing women in science". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on 16 April 2019. Retrieved 24 February 2020.
  55. ^ Ellis-Petersen, Hannah (11 April 2019). "Katie Bouman: the 29-year-old whose work led to first black hole photo". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 29 October 2023.
  56. ^ Southworth, Phoebe (7 December 2019). "Physicist accuses Wikipedia editors of sexism after female scientists she wrote profiles for tagged 'not notable enough'". telegraph.co.uk. The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 27 November 2020. Retrieved 24 February 2020.
  57. ^ Jarvis, Claire (25 April 2019). "A deleted Wikipedia page speaks volumes about its biggest problem". Fastcompany.com. Archived from the original on 29 April 2019. Retrieved 1 March 2020.
  58. ^ Jarvis, Claire (25 April 2019). "What a Deleted Profile Tells Us About Wikipedia's Diversity Problem". Undark.org. Archived from the original on 28 April 2019. Retrieved 24 February 2020.
  59. ^ Sadeque, Samira (29 April 2019). "Wikipedia doesn't think this Black female scientist is notable enough for a page". dailydot.com. The Daily Dot. Archived from the original on 30 April 2019. Retrieved 6 March 2020.
  60. ^ a b c Krämer, Katrina (3 July 2019). "Female scientists' pages keep disappearing from Wikipedia – what's going on?". Chemistry World. Royal Society of Chemistry. Archived from the original on 1 November 2020. Retrieved 3 July 2019.
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  63. ^ Wagle, Kunal M L (19 June 2015). "Felix is shortlisted for Club of the Year at Imperial College Union Awards 2015". Archived from the original on 3 March 2020. Retrieved 31 January 2018.
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  73. ^ "Societal engagement recognised in 2019 President's Awards for Excellence". Imperial College London – News. 7 June 2019. Archived from the original on 20 August 2020. Retrieved 7 June 2019.
  74. ^ McDonald, Clare (25 September 2019). "Computer Weekly announces the Most Influential Women in UK Tech 2019". ComputerWeekly.com. Archived from the original on 25 November 2020. Retrieved 23 January 2020.
  75. ^ Perla Mateo, Maria Pilar (19 February 2019). "Calculadoras ilustradas con científicas" [Calculators illustrated with women scientists]. Heraldo de Aragón (in Spanish). Archived from the original on 17 October 2022. Retrieved 28 July 2020.
  76. ^ "Celebrate women in science — today, and every day". Nature. 615 (7951): 187. 8 March 2023. Bibcode:2023Natur.615..187.. doi:10.1038/d41586-023-00670-5. PMID 36890375. S2CID 257380632.
  77. ^ "Medals and Awards: Royal Society Rosalind Franklin Award and Lecture". The Royal Society. Retrieved 29 August 2024.

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