Cake talk: Kate Whitaker (UMass Amherst, Cosmic DAWN Center)

My personal journey as an academic mama: Lessons in not only surviving, but thriving

In this talk, I have the great pleasure of sharing with you my own personal journey through academia: starting from the very beginning, to graduate school, and my postdoctoral and faculty years beyond. Through personal anecdotes centered around being a woman, a mother, an astronomer, and a mentor, my goal is to share the lessons learned at each stage of my career. Parallel to my own personal journey, I will give a brief history of how our understanding of galaxy formation and evolution has rapidly evolved over the last few decades.