Although it’s only two years old, the Women in Physics club at Penn (WiP) has helped provide female undergraduate students with a support system through conferences, weekly undergraduate presentations, monthly luncheons, and annual lectures.

WiP was founded by Penn undergraduates Ana Cohen, Elizabeth Dresselhaus, Camilla Schneier, Kalina Slavkova, and Angela White after they attended the American Physical Society’s Conferences for Undergraduate Women in Physics (CUWiP) in 2015.

“At the conference, we were so inspired by all of these women who were really pursuing their interests, their love of physics,” Slavkova says. “That motivated us to carry on and continue with the physics major.”

Through WiP, the students hoped to bring some of that inspiration back to Penn. Major goals of the club include providing networking opportunities, and building connections and solidarity among female physics majors.

As women in the field of physics, the students felt the need to prove themselves, putting extra pressure on themselves when they didn’t do well. 

“There was just a lot of noise in my head that was not helpful in letting me focus on what I actually like doing, which is just sitting down with my problem set and trying to figure out the problem,” Schneier says.

After seeing that even some of the most successful female scientists share these struggles, the students realized that it was a problem that was possible to fix by creating WiP and supporting each other.

"We're not yet at a state where the field is equal, but you can at least make yourself feel part of the whole that is the science by finding the diversity that exists,” Slavkova says. “You just have to search for it."

On Thursday, Dec. 8, at 6 p.m., the club will hold its second annual public lecture in the Widener Lecture Room at the Penn Museum. The talk will feature Alessandra Buonanno, director of the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics, who is one of the physicists at the forefront of gravitational wave science. The students hope that Buonanno will discuss her research and career, as well as her identity as a woman in a male-dominated field. They also hope the audience will learn more about physics, and that the students in the audience will walk away with tangible career advice.

In addition to the lectures, WiP hosts monthly luncheons for female faculty, graduate students, and undergraduate students in physics. One of the topics touched upon at the luncheons is how members cope with gender bias.

“You don’t talk about your identity when you talk about physics and yet you inevitably bring it with you whether you’d like to or not,” Schneier says. “These meetings and luncheons have given us a chance to see women who have made it, and get helpful and concrete advice.”

One testament to the club’s success is that its founders have inspired even more students to attend CUWiP this coming year.

“We’re slowly bringing in more people and providing them with opportunities to feel inspired,” Schneier says. “That’s the whole goal.”

She adds that when students are busy judging themselves, it distracts from their ultimate research. The hope is that one day, the existing barriers in science will be destroyed and the field will be open to everybody.

“Having clubs like Women in Physics is necessary for now,” Schneier says. “Hopefully one day it won’t be—it can be just a physics club.”