Round table Discussion: "When to Lean In or Lean Out"

Patricia Rankin is a Professor of Physics at the University of Colorado Boulder. She received her B.Sc. and Ph.D. from Imperial College London and after starting her career in experimental particle physics shifted her focus to how to encourage participation in the sciences.

She is especially interested in enabling effective team approaches to the complex grand challenge problems (like climate change) that need a multidisciplinary approach and researchers with broad perspectives. She is working to promote better mentoring and to encourage scientists to develop broad competencies by adding skills such as negotiation to their traditional discipline-based learning.

She has held a variety of administrative role including being a program officer at the US National Science Foundation, and the Associate Dean for the Natural Sciences and Associate Vice Chancellor for Research positions at CU Boulder. She is active in faculty governance at Boulder and chairs the budget committee for the College of Arts and Sciences. She recently chaired the American Physical Societies (APS) Committee on the Status of Women in Physics and is the co-author of a recent review for the Sasakawa Peace Foundation of Japan discussing the need to increase the representation of women in science and engineering fields and ways to achieve that goal.