Girl Geek X

Girl Geek X Girl Geek Dinners have been hosted at 200+ Silicon Valley tech companies, since Google hosted the first event of 400+ women in tech in 2008.

We are a community of over 40k women in San Francisco Bay Area excited about learning about new technology, meeting other women in tech, & hearing fellow girl geeks speak onstage at these events. The retention and recruitment of mid-level & senior women in tech is a critical lever for increasing the number of women CEOs, executives, engineers & entrepreneurs. We connect women across companies larg

e & small for the purposes of networking & recruiting. At these events, women share thought leadership in areas of STEM expertise, as well as career advice in the fast-paced tech industry.

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The Bay Area Chapter of Girl Geek Dinners was started in 2008 by Angie Chang. Sukrutha Bhadouria joined in 2011 as co-founder and co-organizer.

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All events are listed here: https://girlgeek.io/attend

The evolutionary biologist Maurine Neiman uncovered a whole-genome duplication in a minuscule snail. “We actually don’t ...
09/04/2026

The evolutionary biologist Maurine Neiman uncovered a whole-genome duplication in a minuscule snail. “We actually don’t know, for our snails or any other species, why this happens so reliably, again and again and again,” she said.

Several decades ago, in the dry prairies of eastern Washington, Pam Soltis and Douglas Soltis began tracking a polyploidy event. They knew almost exactly when it had happened: Several species of a plant known as goatsbeard were brought to the United States from Europe in the mid-1920s. They hybridized, and before long, two new species emerged with 24 chromosomes — twice as many as the original species. By growing the plants from seed and studying their genomes, the Soltises could see what happens to cells in the immediate aftermath of genome duplication.

By doubling their entire genome, organisms can evolve extremely rapidly — or they can lose it all. New studies reveal how to survive the high-risk, high-reward evolutionary event.

The BBC’s Sarah Rogers speaks to Leah Solivan, founder and former chief executive of TaskRabbit, an app that connects pe...
09/04/2026

The BBC’s Sarah Rogers speaks to Leah Solivan, founder and former chief executive of TaskRabbit, an app that connects people who need one-off tasks done by workers they can hire easily. Typical tasks include: errands, gardening, moving and furniture assembly.

TaskRabbit helped pioneer the gig economy, giving workers greater control over when and how they worked.

But that flexibility often came without the benefits associated with traditional employment. Leah reflects on the gaps in the model she helped create, why she believes TaskRabbit could have acted sooner, and what led her to sell the company to IKEA.

TaskRabbit founder Leah Solivan on helping pioneer the gig economy and how it falls short.

“We have all of these k***s that we can turn to optimize our experiment,” said Sarah Demers, who works on Mu2e at Fermi ...
09/04/2026

“We have all of these k***s that we can turn to optimize our experiment,” said Sarah Demers, who works on Mu2e at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory near Chicago. “For example, how long do we run with our magnetic fields on? And at what strength do our magnetic fields run? Where is our target placed? Which ones of our systems need to be online?”

She appreciates how AI may help to make quick adjustments to the experimental setup. “Sometimes it can feel like it’s more of an art than a science, to tune these machines,” she said. “Having AI capabilities help us populate that space is a godsend.”

She, the chair of the physics department at Yale University, does not welcome AI into other areas of her work, or her life. Some of her reservations about the technology stem from the fact that popular large language models (LLMs) are trained on datasets full of others’ intellectual property — likely including her own writing — and don’t properly credit their sources.

Sarah Demers, chair of the physics department at Yale University, sees the potential for large language models to both help and harm her field.

Researchers at University of Oxford ensured the UK could hold its head high after winning the biomechanics prize. “The w...
09/04/2026

Researchers at University of Oxford ensured the UK could hold its head high after winning the biomechanics prize. “The whole team is thrilled,” said Dr Matilda Brindle. She and her colleagues investigated the evolution of kissing and needed a scientific definition of the act. They settled on “non-agonistic interactions involving directed, infraspecific oral-oral contact with some movement of the lips/mouthparts and no food transfer”.

She is writing a book on non-reproductive sexual behaviour, and has studied the evolution of ma********on, making her a strong contender to become the Marie Curie of Ig Nobels by winning more than once. “We’re so focused on pen*ses, what they do and why they are important, but all these other sexual behaviours are important,” she said.

It is natural to want friends that are kind to us, but our friends interact with others in the world in ways that can affect our lives. Dr Jaimie Krems at the University of California, Los Angeles, showed there’s plenty of room for attack dogs in our friendship groups, as long as they target those we dislike. “Sometimes we want our friends to be more vicious and indifferent when they interact with our enemies,” she said. “I’ve felt, in many instances, incredibly loved when people have carried my hate for me and been willing to have my back.”

We round up the winners at awards for achievements that ‘first make people laugh and then make them think’

A lone signal from an experiment in South Dakota doesn’t fit the profile of any other known particles, physicists say.Th...
09/02/2026

A lone signal from an experiment in South Dakota doesn’t fit the profile of any other known particles, physicists say.

The findings were first announced at a particle astrophysics conference in Japan. Hours later, the LZ collaboration uploaded a paper detailing the results to their website. The paper will be submitted to the journal Physical Review Letters for peer review.

“It’s kind of like looking for a needle in a haystack,” said Alvine Kamaha, an LZ physicist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who helped oversee the construction of the detector.

“I’m super, super excited,” said Katherine Freese, a theoretical physicist at the University of Texas at Austin who was not involved in the work. She added that the techniques the LZ team used to analyze its data were “phenomenal.”

A lone signal from an experiment in South Dakota doesn’t fit the profile of any other known particles, physicists say.

“Pathogen adaption, longevity, and cancer resistance—they are fundamentally linked,” says Elise Lauterbur, assistant pro...
09/02/2026

“Pathogen adaption, longevity, and cancer resistance—they are fundamentally linked,” says Elise Lauterbur, assistant professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Vermont and co-lead author of the study.

“Many of the genes that have adapted to viruses in bats are genes that are also involved in longevity and cancer resistance.”

By analyzing the bat genome and experimenting on cultivated cells to mimic their response to disease, the researchers identified where in the distant past eight species of Myotis—one of the largest groups of bats and found nearly everywhere except Antarctica—encountered pathogens and how it influenced their evolution.

The team screened the genome for positive selection, in this case, adaptation to viruses, to pinpoint structural changes such as gene duplication or deletion, and found key differences in the way bats have adapted to DNA and RNA viruses from humans and other primates.

| The University of Vermont

A nationwide survey of new and expecting Latina mothers in the US found that the vast majority thought talking to a peer...
09/02/2026

A nationwide survey of new and expecting Latina mothers in the US found that the vast majority thought talking to a peer would make them feel less isolated and more understood compared to a mental health professional. And providers and policymakers around the United States have started taking notice: English and Spanish-language versions of the Alma program are now being implemented in California and New Jersey.

There is no panacea for postpartum depression. As Amritha Bhat, who has worked on the MOMCare program at the University of Washington, explained it to me: “Having a multipronged approach is a good way to ensure that treatment reaches those most in need.”

These people were recruited because they had their own life experience of giving birth and having postpartum depression symptoms; the coaches were frequently doulas, nurses, and midwives. Patients would talk once or twice a week with their coach to set goals and receive positive feedback, while the coaches had a protocol to follow if it seemed their patient required more serious support. A study published in April found that this new coach-driven approach was successfully reducing depression and anxiety symptoms. Patients experience remission of their depression symptoms within an average of nine days with a peer coach, versus eight days with a licensed therapist. In other words, the mothers assigned to a peer got better almost as quickly as those who saw a professional.

The Lindsay Clancy trial reveals our failure on postpartum depression. Here’s how it gets better.

There have been just five all-female ISS spacewalks to date, and NASA astronaut Jessica Meir has been part of three of t...
09/02/2026

There have been just five all-female ISS spacewalks to date, and NASA astronaut Jessica Meir has been part of three of them — the first three, in fact.

She conducted those with fellow NASA astronaut (and Artemis II crewmember) Christina Koch in 2019 and 2020. French astronaut Sophie Adenot suited up for a 6.5-hour spacewalk.

Jessica rode the station’s Canadarm2 robotic arm to the worksites, while Sophie remained tethered to the station.

For the sixth time in history, a team of two women completed a spacewalk outside the International Space Station.

Joanna Strober, chief executive and cofounder of Midi Health, has big ambitions for the company, but a lavish office isn...
09/02/2026

Joanna Strober, chief executive and cofounder of Midi Health, has big ambitions for the company, but a lavish office isn’t one of them. For a tech unicorn, Midi occupies an unimposing physical space in a boring-looking mixed-use building in Palo Alto.

Heather Hirsch, Midi’s former chief medical innovation officer, now speaks skeptically of venture-capital-funded telehealth startups like her previous employer. “Those companies are pressured to return that investment tenfold,” she says. “The slippery slope is slippery.” She offers hormone therapy through her own concierge practice and endorses it as a longevity aid, but she stresses that it must be used alongside a healthy lifestyle and draws the line at selling supplements, lotions, or the other extras favored by some of the big virtual clinics.

The perimenopause revolution is happening in parallel with the explosion of interest in peptides, at-home blood test platforms, and MRI startups—all part of a swing toward an ever more commercialized, preference-driven version of health care for those who can afford it.

How an alliance of tech startups, MAHA operatives, and actual medical experts made millennial women the new face of hormone therapy.

Growing up, Nancy Grace Roman was told that "women could not be scientists." She didn't listen. She went on to earn a do...
08/31/2026

Growing up, Nancy Grace Roman was told that "women could not be scientists." She didn't listen. She went on to earn a doctorate in astronomy at the University of Chicago in 1949, and by 1960, she was NASA’s Chief of Astronomy and Relativity, the agency’s first chief astronomer. Her work would eventually earn the nickname "Mother of Hubble" for making NASA's first major space-based telescope a reality.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launched on Sunday, Aug. 30 at 7:26 a.m. ET, nine months ahead of schedule, aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The telescope has about the same sensitivity and sharpness as Hubble but a field of view at least 100 times larger, meaning it can survey the sky much faster.

"This survey will contain over 2 billion galaxies and will enable us to study how the structures in our universe—stars, the galaxies, the clusters of galaxies—grew and evolved. We'll also measure how our universe has expanded over time, and these are the keys that will allow us to unlock the fundamental nature of dark matter and dark energy and the fabric of the universe itself," explained Julie McEnery, NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Roman telescope senior project scientist, at the prelaunch news conference.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launched on Sunday at 7:26 a.m. ET from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

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