The Women in Physics conference provides female scientists with a place to share ideas, network and build a community.
Created jointly last year by IQC and the Perimeter Institute, the conference explores the gender disparity in the male-dominated field of physics, and aims to give female researchers an opportunity to collaborate and build a community.
"The conference is designed to show women scientists that they're not alone," says Broadbent, who launched the conference alongside Perimeter Institute researcher Sarah Croke.
More than 60 women participated in last year's conference, and more than 100 were excepted to attend at the University of British Columbia this week. The conference wraps up Saturday Aug. 4.
According to a study released in 2010 by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), the odds of a female first-grader in 1985 growing up to earn a PhD in physics are 1 in 286. The odds of a boy in the same Grade 1 class eventually earning a physics PhD are markedly better — about 1 in 167, according to the study. The Women in Physics conference (http://www.phas.ubc.ca/~wipc2012/) was created in part to explain and remedy this discrepancy.
“Events such as this one create a network of peers for young women, and allow them to learn from more senior women the challenges of the job — both scientific, and those challenges that apply more specifically to women,” said Croke said last summer.
“These are important components in building a successful and, more importantly, fulfilling career in physics.”
Check out a video from last year's conference: