Nebraska Women in STEM talked to University of Nebraska – Lincoln Professor Dr. Shireen Adenwalla about her career in the very male-dominated field of physics.
“Being a scientist is a lot of fun. People don’t tell you how much fun it is.”
Dr. Shireen Adenwalla was an eighth grader in India when she took her first physics class. “I remember thinking, ‘Oh thank goodness somebody has thought about this stuff!’ It was such a relief to know that,” said Adenwalla.
Not long after her class began, she realized it was her passion. “It was like it was waiting there for me. I had never known about it, but it felt like it had been waiting for me.”
After being in an all-girls high school, it was at a co-ed college that Adenwalla first experienced being treated differently as a woman. Her first memory of sexism came in college when she performed better on a math test than a high achieving male classmate. He was irritated with her, and her response was to acknowledge that she did indeed outperform him. Her response did not make her popular, and others told her to be more tactful.