About GWIP

Graduate Womxn in Physics (GWIP) aims to build community and support gender diversity among physics graduate students at MIT. We use the umbrella term "womxn" (pronounced wi-muhn) to indicate that transgender women, cisgender women, non-binary people, and gender diverse physics graduate students are all welcome in GWIP.


GWIP hosts a number of social, academic, and outreach events throughout the year. We share casual meals every two weeks. Our faculty advisor, Prof. Anna Frebel, leads a series of career development workshops. We also run a mentoring program with the MIT Undergraduate Womxn in Physics (UWIP).


Each semester, GWIP invites and hosts one or two speakers for the Physics department Colloquium. Here are some of our recent colloquium speakers:
Spring 2024:   Saori Pastore (WUSTL)
Fall 2023:   Stefania Gori (UC Santa Cruz), Tracy Northup (Innsbruck)
Spring 2023:   Yonit Hochberg (Hebrew University)
Fall 2022:   Mariangela Lisanti (Princeton)
Spring 2022:   Alison Sweeney (Yale), Donna Strickland (Waterloo)
Fall 2021:   Ana Maria Rey (JILA/NIST)
Physics colloquium by Tracy Northup, November 2023
Physics colloquium by Tracy Northup, November 2023

There is also a GWIP travel grant to cover expenses to send students to conferences each year. We sometimes hold joint dinners with the Harvard Graduate Womxn in Physics.


GWIP occasionally endorses proposals in the MIT community. More information about our endorsing procedure is available at our endorsing page.


All members of GWIP contribute to planning and organizing our events. Additional positions are listed below.
Faculty advisor:  Prof. Anna Frebel
GWIP lead:
  Edita Bitikji
Colloquium representative:   Marianne Moore
Website administrator:   Marianne Moore
Event cleaning logistics team:   Wenzer Qin, Marianne Moore, Rachel Steinhorst
Lunch/dinner organizers:   Everyone!

To contact us, please email us at gwip-org [at] mit [dot] edu!