Amid national outcry for racial justice last summer, neuroscience graduate student Angeline Dukes yearned for a sense of community among Black scholars in her field.
Following the murder of George Floyd and subsequent Black Lives Matter protests, Black scientists from other disciplines — including astronomy, botany, geology, marine science, and ornithology — created online movements to celebrate the work of their peers and bring attention to discrimination in STEM. Dukes thought it was time for the neuroscience community to do the same.
So in early July, Dukes, a fourth-year PhD student at the University of California Irvine who is Black, tweeted, “Sooo when are we doing a #BlackInNeuro week?”
The response to her call was immediate.
“I didn’t really expect it to get that much attention,” Dukes told MedPage Today. “I got a ton of responses.”
She received more than a dozen replies from neuroscientists who wanted to organize a week to celebrate people of color in the field. Dukes tweeted about #BlackInNeuro on a Friday; by that Sunday, organizers set up their first Zoom meeting to discuss event planning, funding, speaker recruitment, and getting the word out.
Like many other social media movements among Black scientists that launched this summer, Black In Neuro (the organization name doesn’t use a hash tag) provides community in a discipline where Black people have historically been underrepresented. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, Black people earned 7% of all doctorate degrees in 2019, although they make up 13% of the total population. People of color are also marginalized in academic leadership — just 3% make up full-time faculty positions.
Dukes felt the consequences of this underrepresentation this summer. As one of the few Black women in her program, she said the national attention on police brutality and racism was stressful. “It was a very isolating time for a lot of Black scientists,” she said. “We were seeing everything that was happening in the media and in our own backyards. But when we go to campus — we are the only ones there.”
By the end of July, the group had organized #BlackInNeuroWeek, which aimed to forge an online community for Black neuroscientists and allies, as a way to support people of color at all stages of their career. Each day of the week-long event — hosted on Zoom and social media — was filled with panels, roundtable discussions, and social events, with conversations ranging from applying to graduate school to racism in the field. There were also non-science events, including an art contest and Black Joy in Neuro Day.
For Brielle Ferguson, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford who helped organize Black In Neuro, one of the most memorable events of the week was a day dedicated to Black women in neuroscience.
“I never saw a Black woman give any type of talk until I got involved with Black In Neuro,” Ferguson said in an interview. After a panel with a Black woman who is a full-time professor of neuroscience, the event hosted an online social of more than 50 neuroscientists who identified as women or non-binary.
“It was just so powerful,” Ferguson said. “So many of us had never been in a room with two or three Black women [in the field].”
“I met way more Black neuroscientists than I could even fathom existed,” said Kaela Singleton, PhD, a postdoctoral research fellow in the department of cell biology at Emory University, who co-founded Black In Neuro.
As a postdoctorate and adjunct professor within the Black In Neuro community, Singleton said she hopes to help create an environment where Black people in neuroscience “feel not just seen and heard, but are actually supported and uplifted.” Providing mentorship to emerging neuroscientists is a core goal of the organization, as representation at higher levels is often hard to find. “It’s so much harder to be what you can’t see,” Singleton said.
Niesha Savory, a junior at Virginia Tech who is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in clinical neurology and psychology, first learned about #BlackInNeuroWeek on Twitter. After seeing tweets looking for panelists, Savory volunteered to speak about designing a career path in neuroscience.
“It was cool to see other people that look like me, think like me, and have the same experiences as me be in the same field of study,” Savory told MedPage Today. She enjoyed having the experience to connect with people at all stages of their career across the country — and also being able to learn from Black neuroscientists that may have navigated some of the same struggles that she is.
“I don’t think I’ve had a Black professor in neuroscience here,” Savory said of her undergraduate institution. At #BlackInNeuroWeek, she said it was refreshing to see how many people supported representation.
After #BlackInNeuroWeek ended, organizers started thinking about how Black In Neuro could be sustainable.
“We realized pretty quickly that this just couldn’t be a one-and-done thing,” Dukes said. The founder and her team planned a virtual mini-conference in late October that attracted more than 1,000 attendees from 65 countries, and hosted monthly socials and networking events.
In the future, the organization is aiming to provide a formalized mentorship program, as well as continued seminars and professional development workshops, ranging from workshops on presenting research to salary negotiation. The organization is also in the process of becoming a non-profit.
Dukes said she hopes Black In Neuro continues for years, becoming a go-to-resource for Black undergraduates seeking a career in neuroscience. She wants the group to provide support on things like grant applications, conducting research in a neuro lab, and applying to graduate school.
“I really want Black In Neuro to be able to serve as that kind of bridge,” Dukes said, “that helps Black scientists get into the field, but also stay in the field.”
Last Updated February 25, 2021
Source: MedicalNewsToday.com
