Beyond the Lab: Women at MIT and the Future of STEM

The Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields have historically been a male dominated field, but in recent years, more women have joined the workforce. In 2023, there were around 30% of women in the STEM workforce. This number is still relatively low from an even split, but a new generation of women is proving that the landscape is still changing and developing. 

I had the opportunity to interview five inspiring women, Jessy Han, Katarina Cheng, Emily Gan, Jia Wan, and Mansi Sood, who are pursuing degrees and careers in STEM at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Their stories and background offer a glimpse into the challenges, triumphs, and the overall journey of being a woman in the STEM field, highlighting the importance of interdisciplinary study, self-driven learning, and representation in male-dominated fields. 

For many, the path into STEM was anything but straightforward. Katarina Cheng came to MIT drawn by her love of math but eventually pivoted to computer science. “"I took a cryptography class my sophomore year almost on a whim, and I completely fell in love with it," she said. Today, she's deep into cryptographic security research and even is a teacher assistant (TA) for the very course she once found intimidating.

Jessy Han also began her journey with a broader interest in Computer Science (CS), but it was a software engineering internship during college that clarified her path. She realized she didn’t enjoy her experience as much as she hoped and applied for grad school to get involved in more research rather than working  purely with software at a company. “I wanted a more interdisciplinary approach to computer science and be able to apply it to more real world applications,” she said. This motivation led her to do research at MIT as a PhD student, where she connected her interest in computer science and political sciences, applying machine learning and causal inference to criminal justice and healthcare outcomes. 

Similarly, Emily Gan started in MIT as an undergrad in bioengineering before transferring to CS. For her, she felt that CS has faster paced problems and that she could make more of an impact in the field. Her main research interests are in statistics and inference problems. 

Moreover, Jia Wan, a second year-PhD student in EECS, emphasized how her background shaped her approach to STEM. Coming from a rural town in China, Jia navigated the U.S. college system with remarkable independence, self-studying for the SATs and eventually enrolling at Columbia University for her undergraduate, where the mandatory humanities curriculum deeply influenced her thinking. “It helped me learn how to write and speak thoughtfully,” she said. Though she pursued math and later CS, the experience of having to read and discuss 15 books per semester stayed with her. The humanities background now plays a role in her highly mathematical research in reinforcement learning and casual inference, where she collaborated with political scientists and legal scholars to explore algorithmic fairness. 

Across their stories, they all have one thing in common: these women all wanted to make something real and be able to apply their passion for STEM into real situations. 

The road to pursue STEM hasn’t always been easy for these women. Cheng recalls feeling terrified by the open endedness of research and discouraged by the constant failure. “The research problem statements were usually very open and just consisted of trying to make existing protocols in literature more efficient,” she said. 

Similarly, Han felt that PhD research pushed her to take responsibility in considering her passions. “You’re in charge of your research so you have the freedom and responsibility to propose a question and convince your research advisor that it is a good idea,” she said. Han states at the beginning, she never really knows where the project will go and develops a specific question and thesis later on in the process after experimenting and reading current literature, she said. 

In the early stages of working in research, Cheng did feel amounts of imposter syndrome. “I was working with people who had so much more experience and knowledge than me,” she said, “Keeping up was definitely a big challenge, because I felt like I couldn’t contribute anything.” 

Looking back, Cheng highlights that she found it surprising how much she enjoyed working with other people. As a math or computer science major, she usually worked alone, but she found that there were many benefits in collaborating with people who think differently. “It was challenging to get used to working with people who have a different pace or rhythm than you, but it was great to have different angles, backgrounds, and ideas to pull from, especially with how broad the research usually is,” she said. 

Because of Han’s diverse, interdisciplinary background, she felt like her biggest challenge during research was being able to communicate and consider all sides of a problem, she said. “Because I do heavily interdisciplinary research, I need to collaborate with people from different backgrounds,” she said, “You really need to speak their language in the sense that they can understand the other field while giving their own input.” Han found it challenging sometimes to explain concepts that may seem implicit to her but unfamiliar to people outside of the field. 

Wan echoes this sentiment. While her research before was largely theoretical, it always begins from a practical question. “I used to work more on theoretical mathematics, but as I got to interact with people from other fields and be exposed to more courses both STEM and non-STEM, I felt inspired to apply my work to what’s happening in society.” she said. 

Mentorship and community have also played major roles in shaping these women’s experiences and guiding their development in the STEM field. Mansi Sood, with a unique international background, felt lucky to have a supportive lab and environment that mitigated the bigger challenges of adjusting to a new system of life and research, she said. “The biggest challenge for me was mainly being in a new environment and the increase in the amount of freedom.”

During Sood’s PhD at Carnegie Melon University (CMU), she felt that it was important to find a mentor that besides being excited about their work, was also supportive and able to guide her through the research process, she said. In the end, she collaborated with a female researcher who was very supportive and made a big impact in helping her through the PhD process. 

Many of the women also hoped to help other women in the STEm field. In Han’s case, she felt that there wasn't a huge support system for women in the STEM field, leading her to create her own platform that focuses on creating a support group for women in STEM fields. “Discrimination in the [STEM] field isn’t always obvious, it is more a feeling of alienation, especially when all the male students are discussing among themselves,” she said, “I hope to help women learn to be more confident and speak up when they should in conversations.” 

Furthermore, Cheng, who has taught multiple semesters as TA shared, “"The TAs often make or break the class. I try to be the kind of mentor I wish I had, someone who encourages you to ask questions and makes you feel like you belong."

As each of these women continue to carve their own path in the world of STEM, their journeys remain uniquely personal but also interconnected. What emerges across their stories isn’t just a common love for science or math, but a persistent drive to bridge the technical with the human. “I think STEM and the humanities can deeply inform each other,” said Wan. “We need good theory to make tools better, but we also need to understand people, context, and the world the tools are shaping.” These women are not only solving technical problems, they are reshaping the conversations in STEM and reminding us that science is not static, and neither is who gets to do it. 

Read the Full Profiles

Interested in learning more? Explore the full conversations with each researcher:

• Jessy Han — Exploring the intersection of computer science, public policy, and social impact.

• Katarina Cheng — From mathematics to cryptographic security research.

• Emily Gan — Applying statistics and inference to fast-moving problems in computer science.

• Jia Wan — Bridging mathematics, reinforcement learning, and questions of fairness.

• Mansi Sood — Navigating research, mentorship, and international academic life.

Each story offers a deeper look at the people shaping the future of STEM.