![Jennifer A Doudna Mentor Tree with Details Jennifer A Doudna Mentor Tree with Details](/sites/sdct/files/styles/utexas_image_style_2000w/public/2022-12/jennifer-a-doudna-jiabao-li.png?itok=VOEl19z8)
About Shifting Winds: Gendered Structures of Academic Mentorship
Every researcher alive today had mentors, those who helped assimilate them into a life of scholarly work. And in turn they each had their mentors, and so on to the dawn of knowledge. In the same way, each researcher’s mentees take their perspectives and methods to future mentees, and to their mentees, etc. These comprise the roots and branches, respectively, of the academic tree of a single researcher. If we let these ancestors’ and descendants’ genders affect these trees like a “wind,” most curl nearly to the earth. We depict and describe the structure of these trees, and how this wind has changed over the decades. To set these trees growing upright again we visualize giving differential weight to male and female researchers.
![Francis Galton widest and tallest mentor tree Jiabao Li Francis Galton widest and tallest mentor tree Jiabao Li](/sites/sdct/files/styles/utexas_image_style_1350w/public/2022-12/francis-galton-widest-and-tallest-8-jiabao-li.jpg?itok=YqyQKWCd)
Francis Galton, Widest and Tallest Mentor Tree
![Richard P Feynman Mentor Tree by Jiabao Li Richard P Feynman Mentor Tree by Jiabao Li](/sites/sdct/files/styles/utexas_image_style_1350w/public/2022-12/richard-p-feynman-jiabao-li.jpg?itok=Iicd0PdY)
Richard P Feynman, Mentor Tree
Project Details
Credits
Jiabao
LiHoujiang Liu
Jilie Zeng
Di Wu
Ying Ding
Alec McGail
Technology
p5.js, data science
Website
![Donald Reiff Most Female Tilted Mentor Tree Donald Reiff Most Female Tilted Mentor Tree](/sites/sdct/files/styles/utexas_image_style_2000w/public/2022-12/donald-reiff-most-female-tilted-jiabao-li.jpg?itok=UIoEsWFB)