International Day of Women and Girls in Science: Making a difference with science
Scientist Trang Duong spends much of her working time in front of a computer, working with various types of numerical models and analysis tools to help answer big questions, such as how climate change is affecting the world’s coasts.
“The models are tools to represent the real natural system, to bring it into our computers. They basically mimic the real system so that we can study the systems, in terms of their hydrodynamics and morphological changes,” she said.
Trang, a Lecturer in Numerical Modelling at IHE Delft, is a passionate, committed researcher, something that is reflected in her recent publications.
In the past six months, her publications include a first authorship and a co-authorship of papers both in the Nature Portfolio journal Scientific Reports on the effects of climate change on tidal inlets and their adjacent coastlines, and another co-authorship of a Nature Climate Change article on climate change threats to heritage sites along African coasts. In addition, she is the sole author of a paper on the impact of climate change on erosion and accretion along coastlines adjacent to small tidal inlets, which had never been looked at before, published in Frontiers in Marine Science.
In an interview ahead of today’s International Day of Girls and Women in Science, Trang, who holds a PhD and MSc from IHE Delft, reflected on her career choice. She was inspired by her father, also an IHE Delft alumni who was a director at an engineering technology transfer institute. She added that though having an in-house role model helped pursuing science was definitely her own choice. She emphasised, however, the importance of the unconditional support her family has given her and continues to give her, regardless of her choices in both career and life.
Trang sees her career choice as a two-way process: science also chose her.
“I am passionate in what I am doing, and I see the impact of what I can do for the world,” she said. “I think it is really a combination – I chose this profession and started on this path and at the same time it feels like this career path chose me. We clicked.”
Solving Real Problems
Trang’s passion for science is underpinned by a drive to make a difference, and to contribute to a better world – she sees how her research helps solve real-life problems and challenges that affect people’s lives, particularly in less affluent countries.
“We bring in knowledge with the aim to help policy makers and planners have a better understanding about the current situation and the future, and we support science-backed management, planning and decision-making. In that way, we can really contribute to the society, to the world,” she said, adding that she also considers the education and teaching a great way to make an impact to the world, as it helps the next generations of scientists, who will apply what they learn at IHE Delft around the world.
That she is a woman in a largely male-dominated field is nothing that occupies her mind, Trang said – instead, she focuses on the task at hand: “When I go to meetings, I don’t count how many men and how many women there are. I see it as: you are working with colleagues, and you are doing science together.”
Still, schools and societies could do more to encourage girls to consider science as a career, she said. In school, girls would benefit from more access to science education, and their ideas should be nurtured so that they can see the opportunities science offers. Lectures, symposia and conferences can help those who are curious explore further.
“Maybe they don’t have a role model in their family, in their close circle, but when they attend classes, attend conferences, read the news, they might find their own role models, and they might think: Ok, she can do it, so I also can do it,” she said. “We as a community can try to nurture it.”
To ensure that science is an attractive choice for all, scientist employers could ensure that they make it possible for staff to have work-life balance, for example by providing parental leave and offering solutions that ease the return to work after such leave, she said.
Girls, she said, should pursue science for a simple reason:
“Because we can. And we can make a difference. Another thing is our responsibility,” she said. “As individuals, we all have a responsibility to contribute, to protect the world we are all living in, to secure the future for many generations that come after us.”