Taylah Brennan and Timia Osman are looking forward to the day when it is no longer noteworthy that two women graduated with first class honours from a degree in medical radiation physics.
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But they admit that while we’re not there yet, we’re a lot closer than four years ago when they started at the University of Wollongong.
Ms Brennan recalled that as they went in to one a lecture for first-year physics, also compulsory for engineering students, they found themselves among about 10 females in the university’s giant Hope Theatre, which was otherwise packed with young men.
In physics, she said there were small numbers of women to “hundreds” of men. But while it is still male-dominated, even in the past four years, things had changed – Ms Osman’s honours supervisor is female, as are many medical physics students today.
Ms Brennan, 22, gives some of the credit to the programs introduced to encourage more women to study the traditionally male-dominated STEM courses (science, technology, engineering and mathematics).
“UOW specifically has a camp for girls looking at doing any kind of science or maths, and I went to that over the summer,” she said.
“I know that helped me – there was heaps of females there and it just makes you feel a bit more comfortable, knowing that there’s other people thinking of doing the same thing.”
She focused her research on brachytherapy, a form of radiotherapy where tiny radioactive “seeds” implanted into the body to help fight cancer, including prostate and breast cancers.
Ms Osman, 22, said teachers helped pave her path earlier, when as a student at the Illawarra Grammar School she was encouraged to take any science subjects she wanted.
“I think the social attitudes have changed,” she said. “We have such a plethora of subjects to choose from, and all the sciences were there available for me to do.”
Her research furthered better dynamic imaging of lung tumours, using images over time to show how a tumour might move during the respiratory cycle.
And the university is in no hurry to see their departure. Now their Bachelor of Medical and Radiation Physics (Honours) is completed, both students have been offered a place to continue their research in a PhD, and intend to do so.
