ASA Adds 3 Women Fellows

The American Scientific Affiliation added three new women to the ASA Fellow ranks in 2015: Gladys Kober, Kathryn Applegate, and Robin Pals-Rylaarsdam. This raised the number of women Fellows to 22 (out of 172 total Fellows, putting females at 13%).

Gladys Kober

Gladys Kober is an astronomy data analyst with NASA and recently led an effort to develop a new high school textbook on astronomy for a Christian audience. Gladys is an adjunct professor of astronomy at Towson University. She was raised in a Christian home in Brazil and has a M. A. in Astrophysics from Brazil. She worked for 2 years in Rio's planetarium.

Kathryn Applegate

Kathryn Applegate is a biologist. She earned bachelor’s degrees in biophysics and mathematics at Centenary College in Shreveport, Louisiana, where she co-wrote an undergraduate biophysics textbook still used in Centenary’s biophysics program. Kathryn received her Ph.D. in computational cell biology from The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) in La Jolla, California, in 2010. There she developed computer vision algorithms to measure the remodeling activity of the cell’s internal scaffold, the cytoskeleton. In addition, she developed mathematical models of cytoskeleton dynamics to investigate how its activity at the molecular level contributes to higher-order processes such as cell migration. Kathryn leads the Evolution and Christian Faith grants program for BioLogos.

Robin Pals-Rylaarsdam

Robin Pals-Rylaarsdam is a biology professor and Department Chair at Benedictine University, and formerly a book review editor for the ASA Journal PSCF. Robin was a Research Associate at Northwestern University/Children's Memorial Hospital (1999-2000).

Other CWIS news: As of November 21, 2015, Christian Women in Science, an affiliate of the ASA, has 275 members.  Of those, 166 are Student Basic or Student members, and 90 are Regular members. If you are a women working in any branch of science or scientific discipline, please consider joining ASA and CWIS.