Academia has a diversity problem, especially in STEM. There is a dearth of scientists who identify as Black, Hispanic or who are members of marginalized communities in STEM-related faculty roles at colleges and universities, studies show. These inequities can hurt students and result in harmful biases in tools and teachings of fields that affect the public.
We spoke with Aaron Streets, associate professor of bioengineering, computational biology and biophysics, Berkeley BioEngineering Scholars Program (BioESP) director, Division of Computing, Data Science, and Society (CDSS) faculty advisor for graduate diversity and co-founder of the Stanford.Berkeley.UCSF Next Generation Faculty Symposium, about his journey. Streets discussed why he started the symposium, which aims to increase the diversity and quality of applicant pools for quantitative biological and biomedical sciences faculty roles, and its impact in the San Francisco Bay Area.