Professor Rita Colwell awarded SGM Prize Medal

14 April 2014

At the Society for General Microbiology Annual Conference, Dr Rita Colwell will be awarded the Society’s Prize Medal. Rita, Distinguished University Professor both at the University of Maryland at College Park and at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, is interested in global infectious diseases and the provision of safe drinking water across the world.

Dr Colwell has held many advisory positions in the US Government, non-profit science policy organisations and private foundations, as well as in the international scientific research community. She is an internationally respected scientist and educator, and has authored or co-authored 17 books and more than 800 scientific publications. Her prize-winning lecture, Climate change, oceans, and infectious disease: Cholera pandemics as a model, will be given on Monday 14 April at 12.10 in Hall 1A.

When were you first aware of science?

I would say I’ve always been interested in science – it started in my childhood. I grew up in the small town of Beverly, Massachusetts. I had a committed set of elementary school teachers – it was a time when women didn’t really have many other career alternatives other than teaching, so we were very fortunate to have the benefit of many extraordinarily talented and dedicated educators. I read voraciously as a child, during the summer I would spend almost every day in the library.

Was biology always the pathway you thought you’d go down?

In high school I became intrigued by chemistry. My older sister had married a physicist, his friends were physical chemists; they were fascinating and it seemed like an area to go into. When I asked my high school chemistry teacher to write me a letter of recommendation he refused, even though I’d received straight A’s as, in his words: “Women can’t do chemistry.”

What about university?

I was accepted at Radcliffe College – at the time the women’s component of Harvard, but I’d only received a half scholarship, which didn’t cover the entire college fees. My sister had taken a teaching job at Purdue University – I applied there at her encouragement and I was awarded a complete scholarship. Had I gone to Radcliffe, I might not have ended up a scientist because at that time women there mainly majored in the arts and humanities. I had a roommate at Purdue who was taking a bacteriology class taught by Dorothy Powelson – one of only two or three female professors at the university. After hearing about what a great teacher she was I signed up for her classes; she was remarkable and I became a bacteriologist.

You’ve mentioned inspirational teachers a couple of times now – why is good science teaching important?

It’s absolutely critical to have young people undertake discovery-based research. They need to do experiments that challenge them to understand a particular phenomenon and not just follow a ‘cook book’. Experimental tasks allow you to absorb far more information than if you are simply subjected to rote learning.

What will you be talking about in your Prize Lecture today?

I’ll be discussing links between the environment and human health – particularly in terms of infectious disease. I’ve done a great deal of work over the past 45 years on cholera; I would say that my team and I have shown that Vibrio cholerae is an environmental bacterium. When I first proposed this in the late 60s it was received with tremendous scepticism. Now it’s well understood that V. cholerae is an aquatic species that has the ability to cause tremendous epidemics. I’ll be talking about an outbreak in Haiti that was the ‘perfect storm’ in terms of cholera epidemics. The earthquake caused a great many people to be displaced to refugee camps. This, matched with the hottest summer in 60 years followed by high levels of rainfall, was the perfect environment for an outbreak.

You’ve received many awards from some very important people, can you tell us about a few?

I was delighted to be nominated for the Stockholm Water Prize. I think the King and Queen of Sweden are doing a wonderful thing by drawing attention to safe water and sanitation, which I believe will do more for human and animal health than any other actions we can take.

I was also surprised to be awarded the Order of the Rising Sun from the Emperor of Japan. On a Friday afternoon I was on a plane about to fly out to give a lecture, just as the doors were about to close I took the call asking if I’d accept the award – I was honoured and delighted to accept – how could you turn it down?

What’s the Emperor of Japan like?

He’s a very gracious individual and happens to be a marine biologist. He loves to discuss the taxonomy of fish, his specialty in research!

You’re very engaged in promoting women in science – what are the problems that women in the sector face?

Breaking through to senior levels in academia and business remains a problem – it’s the final step, getting beyond the destructive sexism that still exists. I chair the Committee on Women in Science, Engineering, and Medicine at the National Academy of Science. The problem remains where women go into the life sciences, make it through their PhD, then don’t get promoted to professorships or departmental Chairs. Until these positions have roughly a 50:50 ratio, countries won’t be using all of their intellectual capacity.

How can we fix these problems?

That’s perplexing and difficult. One can argue for the actions taken by countries like Finland that mandate that all state-owned companies must be an ‘equitable proportion of men and women’. I’m not sure mandating is the way to go, but how else can you increase the membership of women in the upper echelons of management?

Finally, what does winning this prize mean to you?

It’s a tremendous pleasure to be recognised by the Society. I’ve been a member of SGM ever since I was a graduate student, so for about 50 years;  it’s a society I’ve always had high respect for –  I think the SGM’s journals and activities are of the highest quality. I’m truly delighted and honoured.