Deborah Berebichez

Last updated
Deborah Berebichez
Deborah Berebichez at GHC 2017.jpg
Berebichez at the 2017 Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing
NationalityMexican
Occupation(s)Physicist, data scientist, TV host, educator and entrepreneur
Website www.sciencewithdebbie.com

Deborah Berebichez is a Mexican physicist, data scientist, TV host, educator and entrepreneur who dedicates her career to promoting education in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields. She was the first Mexican woman to graduate with a Ph.D. in physics from Stanford University. [1] [2] She has developed models for cellular wave transmission which are in the process of being patented. Sometimes known as "The Science Babe", she appears in mainstream television and radio segments where she explains concepts in physics in everyday life.

Contents

Education

According to Berebichez, she was a curious girl, [3] [4] good at math and science [5] and dreamed of becoming an astronaut. [4] Growing up as a girl in a conservative community, [6] [3] [4] she felt discouraged from pursuing a career in science. [6] [3] [4] Despite being more interested in physics, she started studying philosophy and completed the first two years of university in Mexico City [6] while secretly applying to schools in the US, after having heard that they allowed students to complete several majors. [6] She is Jewish. [7]

After passing an advanced placement test, [3] she was accepted for a Wien scholarship at Brandeis University in Massachusetts [5] [6] where she at first continued her studies in philosophy. Here, she encountered her first science course, an intro-course to Astronomy [5] [3] [4] and in her senior year she decided she needed give physics a try. [4] Inspired by Edward Witten's previous switch from history to physics, [5] she was allowed to switch from philosophy to physics and to skip the first two years of the physics major after passing a test in vector calculus. [6] After studying math and physics over the summer for 12 hours each day [6] [3] [4] she passed the test. In the end, she completed the four years physics curriculum in two years [5] and graduated from Brandeis summa cum laude with highest honors in physics and philosophy. [3]

After Brandeis, she returned to Mexico where she completed a master's in physics. She won a merit-based full scholarship from the Mexican government [3] and went on to complete a PhD in physics from Stanford [5] [8] in 2004. [6] While at Stanford, she worked with Nobel laureate Steven Chu from 1998 [3] and co-created the Association for the Advancement of Women in Physics with another female student. [6] It was through her interviews with professors, that she discovered that she was going to become the first woman from Mexico to earn a PhD in physics from Stanford. [6]

Career

Berebichez speaks on Outrageous Acts of Thinking at the Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism (NECSS) on April 12, 2015, at F.I.T. Haft Auditorium in New York City. Outrageous Acts of Thinking-Berebichez - NECSS 2015.JPG
Berebichez speaks on Outrageous Acts of Thinking at the Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism (NECSS) on April 12, 2015, at F.I.T. Haft Auditorium in New York City.

After completing her PhD, Berebichez was a post-doctoral researcher first at Columbia University's Applied Math and Physics Department and later at NYU's Courant Institute for Mathematical Sciences. Dr. Berebichez has written scholarly articles on the subject of altering the structural design of optical, mechanical and electrical systems in order to prevent signal transmission loss due to wave scattering. [9] She is a member of the American Physical Society. [10]

Berebichez is the Chief Data Scientist at Metis, a leading data science training provider. At Metis she leads the creation and growth of data science training opportunities, including bootcamps, corporate training, professional development, and online programs. [11] She is an active contributor to the national data science ecosystem through public speaking, presentations, and panels at data science conferences and has appeared as a guest expert on CNN and Nova. [6] [8] Previously, she worked on Wall Street as an equity risk analyst for MSCI Barra [10] and as the Vice President of Risk Analytics at Morgan Stanley. [4]

Since 2012, Berebichez has been featured in the television show "You Have Been Warned" (a.k.a. "Outrageous Acts of Science") on The Science Channel. [12] She co-starred in National Geographic's Humanly Impossible from 2011. [8] In her "Science Babe" web video project, she explains everyday scientific phenomena and principles of physics in plain language, such as "The Physics of High Heels". [13] She is a John C. Whitehead Fellow at the Foreign Policy Association, a winner of the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) STAR Award and a recipient for Top Latina Tech Blogger by the Association of Latinos in Social Media (LATISM).

Over the past 10 years, Berebichez has been a recurring speaker at skeptic conferences such as the Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism and The Amaz!ng Meeting. [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19]

Volunteer work

She was the 2013 Global Ambassador for the Technovation Challenge, [20] an international educational competition sponsored by technology non-profit Iridescent [21] that promotes the programming of science-based mobile applications by girls and young women all across the globe, including creating a business model around the new application and instructing participants on how to pitch their applications to investors. [22] [23]

Berebichez says her mission is to help women and minorities enter STEM fields. [5] [4] [23]

Personal life

Berebichez is married to physicist Neer Asherie. [24] They have a daughter. [25]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Debbie Gibson</span> American singer-songwriter, record producer and actress (born 1970)

Deborah Ann Gibson is an American singer-songwriter, record producer, and actress.

Irene Maxine Pepperberg is an American scientist noted for her studies in animal cognition, particularly in relation to parrots. She has been a professor, researcher and/or lecturer at multiple universities, and she is currently a research associate and lecturer at Harvard University. Pepperberg also serves on the Advisory Council of METI. She is well known for her comparative studies into the cognitive fundamentals of language and communication, and she was one of the first to work on language learning in animals other than human species, by extension to a bird species. Pepperberg is also active in wildlife conservation, especially in relation to parrots.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Debbie Meyer</span> American swimmer

Deborah Elizabeth Meyer, also known by her married name Deborah Weber, is an American former competition swimmer, a three-time Olympic champion, and a former world record-holder in four events. Meyer won the 200-, 400-, and 800-meter freestyle swimming races in the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. While she was still a 16-year-old student at Rio Americano High School in Sacramento, California, she became the first swimmer to win three individual gold medals in one Olympics, winning the 200-, 400-, and 800-meter freestyle swimming races. Katie Ledecky is the only other female swimmer to have done the same, in the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Melissa Franklin</span> Particle physicist

Melissa Eve Bronwen Franklin is a Canadian experimental particle physicist and the Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics at Harvard University. In 1992, Franklin became the first woman to receive tenure in the physics department at Harvard University and she served as chair of the department from 2010 to 2014. While working at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Chicago, her team found some of the first evidences for the existence of the top quark. In 1993, Franklin was elected a fellow of the American Physical Society. She is currently member of the CDF (Fermilab) and ATLAS (CERN) collaborations.

The philosophy of biology is a subfield of philosophy of science, which deals with epistemological, metaphysical, and ethical issues in the biological and biomedical sciences. Although philosophers of science and philosophers generally have long been interested in biology, philosophy of biology only emerged as an independent field of philosophy in the 1960s and 1970s, associated with the research of David Hull. Philosophers of science then began paying increasing attention to biology, from the rise of Neodarwinism in the 1930s and 1940s to the discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953 to more recent advances in genetic engineering. Other key ideas include the reduction of all life processes to biochemical reactions, and the incorporation of psychology into a broader neuroscience.

The New England Skeptical Society (NESS) is an American organization dedicated to promoting science and reason. It was founded in January 1996 as the Connecticut Skeptical Society, by Steven Novella, Perry DeAngelis and Bob Novella. The group later joined with the Skeptical Inquirers of New England (SINE) and the New Hampshire Skeptical Resource to form the New England Skeptical Society.

<i>The Skeptics Guide to the Universe</i> American science and skepticism podcast

The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe (SGU) is an American weekly skeptical podcast hosted by Steven Novella, MD, along with a panel of contributors. The official podcast of the New England Skeptical Society, it was named to evoke The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The show features discussions of recent scientific developments in layman's terms, and interviews authors, people in the area of science, and other famous skeptics. The SGU podcast includes discussions of myths, conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, the paranormal, and other forms of superstition, from the point of view of scientific skepticism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jennifer Tour Chayes</span> American computer scientist and mathematician

Jennifer Tour Chayes is dean of the college of computing, data science, and society at the University of California, Berkeley. Before joining Berkeley, she was a technical fellow and managing director of Microsoft Research New England in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which she founded in 2008, and Microsoft Research New York City, which she founded in 2012.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sharon A. Hill</span> American geologist and science blogger

Sharon A. Hill is an American science writer and speaker known for her research into the interaction between science and the public, focusing on education and media topics. Hill's research has dealt mainly with paranormal, pseudoscience, and strange natural phenomena and began at the University at Buffalo, where she performed her graduate work in this area. Hill attended Pennsylvania State University, earning her Bachelor of Science degree in geosciences and working as a Pennsylvania geologist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vera Kistiakowsky</span> American physicist (1928–2021)

Vera Kistiakowsky was an American research physicist, teacher, and arms control activist. She was professor emerita at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the physics department and Laboratory for Nuclear Science, and was an activist for women's participation in the sciences. Kistiakowsky was an expert in experimental particle physics and observational astrophysics. She was the first woman appointed MIT professor of physics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fei-Fei Li</span> American computer scientist (born 1976)

Fei-Fei Li is an American computer scientist who was born in China and is known for establishing ImageNet, the dataset that enabled rapid advances in computer vision in the 2010s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ruth Charney</span> American mathematician

Ruth Michele Charney is an American mathematician known for her work in geometric group theory and Artin groups. Other areas of research include K-theory and algebraic topology. She holds the Theodore and Evelyn G. Berenson Chair in Mathematics at Brandeis University. She was in the first group of mathematicians named Fellows of the American Mathematical Society. She was in the first group of mathematicians named Fellows of the Association for Women in Mathematics. She served as president of the Association for Women in Mathematics during 2013–2015, and served as president of the American Mathematical Society for the 2021–2023 term.

The Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism is a four-day conference focusing on science and skepticism founded in 2009 and held annually in New York City. NECSS is jointly run by the New York City Skeptics (NYCS) and the New England Skeptical Society (NESS). The Society for Science-Based Medicine joined as a full sponsor of the conference in 2015. As of 2016, attendance was estimated at approximately 500 people.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">CSICon</span> Annual skeptic conference in the United States

CSICon or CSIConference is an annual skeptical conference typically held in the United States. CSICon is hosted by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), which is a program of the Center for Inquiry (CFI). CSI publishes the magazine Skeptical Inquirer.

Lisa Dyson is an American scientist, physicist, and entrepreneur. She is the founder and CEO of Kiverdi, a biotechnology company that uses carbon transformation technologies to develop sustainable products for commercial applications, including agriculture, plastics, and biodegradable materials. She is also the founder and CEO of Air Protein, a spin-off company from Kiverdi, which seeks to produce sustainable meat alternatives from elements found in air.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Debbie Senesky</span> Assistant professor of Aeronautics

Debbie Senesky is an associate professor of Aeronautics at Stanford University. She is the principal investigator of the EXtreme Environment Microsystems Laboratory, and studies nanomaterials in extreme environments.

Ivette Fuentes is a Professor of Quantum Physics at the University of Southampton and Professor of Theoretical Quantum Optics at the University of Vienna. Her work considers fundamental quantum mechanics, quantum optics and astrophysics. She is interested in how quantum information theory can make use of relativistic effects.

Deborah A. "Debbie" Armstrong is an American health consultant, businesswoman, and politician who served as a member of the New Mexico House of Representatives for the 17th district from January 2015 to July 2022.

Emily Agard is a professor of Immunology at Toronto Metropolitan University. She is the current Director of SciXchange, the center for outreach, science communication, and public engagement within the Faculty of Science, and is the Toronto Chapter Ambassador for Technovation Girls. Agard has a B.Sc. in Life Sciences from Queen's University, and a Ph.D. in Immunology from the University of Toronto.

References

  1. ↑ "Facebook Deborah Berebiches". Facebook . Retrieved 2019-01-21.
  2. ↑ "Science with Debbie" . Retrieved 2019-01-21.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 "Q&A With Deborah Berebichez: Seeing the World Through Physics Glasses". The Story Collider. 12 July 2012. Retrieved 2019-01-21.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 "Deborah Berebichez". www.aps.org. Retrieved 2019-01-21.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 "Deborah Berebichez '96". Brandeis Magazine. Retrieved 2019-01-21.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Bradford, Laurence. "Dr. Deborah Berebichez On Overcoming Barriers To Achievement For Women In STEM". Forbes. Retrieved 2019-01-21.
  7. ↑ "Deborah Berebichez". 29 January 2016.
  8. 1 2 3 "Deborah Berebichez | HuffPost". www.huffingtonpost.com. Retrieved 2019-01-21.
  9. ↑ Heider, P; Berebichez, D; Kohn, R.V.; Weinstein, M.I. (20 Feb 2008). "Optimization of scattering resonances". Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization. Springer-Verlag. 36 (5): 443–456. doi:10.1007/s00158-007-0201-8. ISSN   1615-1488. S2CID   17702825.
  10. 1 2 "Deborah Berebichez Curriculum Vitae" (PDF). The Science Babe. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2015-11-06. Retrieved 2019-01-21.
  11. ↑ "Metis – Meet Our Team". Metis team listings. Retrieved 2019-01-21.
  12. ↑ "Debbie Berebichez IMDB". IMDB. Retrieved 2019-01-21.
  13. ↑ "The Science Babe – Video". Science with Debbie. Retrieved 2019-01-21.
  14. ↑ "NECSS – Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism". NECSS. 2016-10-27. Archived from the original on 2016-10-27. Retrieved 2020-12-20.
  15. ↑ "NECSS – Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism". NECSS. 2015-09-24. Archived from the original on 2015-09-24. Retrieved 2020-12-20.
  16. ↑ "NECSS – Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism". NECSS. 2014-09-21. Archived from the original on 2014-09-21. Retrieved 2020-12-20.
  17. ↑ "NECSS – Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism". NECSS. 2013-08-31. Archived from the original on 2013-08-31. Retrieved 2020-12-20.
  18. ↑ "NECSS – Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism". 2012-10-04. Archived from the original on 2012-10-04. Retrieved 2020-12-20.
  19. ↑ "2015 Speakers | TAM! 2015". TAM! 2015. 2015-09-26. Archived from the original on 2015-09-26. Retrieved 2020-12-20.
  20. ↑ NBCUniversal, ed. (2013-10-17). "Technovation Challenge Wins #RevUp2050 Presented By NBCUniversal And The Feast" (Press release). Retrieved 2019-04-20.
  21. ↑ "Iridescent" . Retrieved 2019-01-21.
  22. ↑ "Debbie Berebichez and Graciela Garcia discuss the importance of the Technovation Challenge". The Feast. Retrieved 2019-01-21.
  23. 1 2 Richinick, Michele (30 September 2013). "Tech women school next gen". Afternoon MoJoe. MSNBC. Retrieved 2019-01-21.
  24. ↑ Hodge, Channon (24 December 2014). "Two Physicists Recapture Their Chemistry". Vows – The New York Times. Retrieved 2019-01-21.
  25. ↑ "Our month in Ireland". Debbie Berebichez. 2 June 2018. Retrieved 2020-12-20.
External video
Nuvola apps kaboodle.svg “Deborah Berebichez – A Non-Stop Skeptic in a Believer's World”, May 22, 2013, NECSS
Nuvola apps kaboodle.svg "Debbie Berebichez – How Physics Gains Insight from Interconnectivity", 11 November 2010, TEDxEast
Nuvola apps kaboodle.svg “Dr. Deborah Berebichez – Iridescent", November 2, 2012
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.