From the beginning of his career, astrophysicist and science educator Keivan Stassun has committed his time, energy and passion to increase diversity in STEM fields. Over the last six years, the U.S. National Science Foundation Research Traineeship (NRT) program has been an essential part of that goal, helping Stassun and his team at Vanderbilt University to launch and grow an initiative providing groundbreaking opportunities for neurodivergent scientists. Through the Frist Center for Autism and Innovation, more than 150 graduate students — half of whom are neurodivergent — have engaged in cutting-edge research and training and the development of technological tools, all centered on opening new career pathways for neurodiverse individuals across the STEM fields. For his innovative work and extraordinary dedication to lifting a new and diverse generation of STEM leaders, Stassun was recently awarded the MacArthur Genius Grant. His work and the work of his students were also featured in a 60 Minutes story by Anderson Cooper.
Q: Throughout your career, you've focused so much energy on increasing diversity in the STEM fields. Why is that so vital to you? Why should people consider it vital to society?
A: First, I'll give you a more personal answer. I'm enamored with this idea of the human diversity of mind. That the solutions to hard problems have always depended and always will depend on drawing on that diversity. Solutions only come when we find some new way of looking at a problem — with some new angle, some new way of asking the question, some new perspective. And so, I think it just makes all the sense in the world to believe that when we maximize the range of ways of thinking and perspectives, we maximize the likelihood of that out-of-the-box idea occurring. Flashes of genius come through the mix and swirl of influences, exposures and learnings that form a person's unique human experience. It's not an unscientific answer — but it's more of a belief system.
Putting on my National Science Board hat, we're thinking about maintaining our nation's global leadership in science and technology at a time when geopolitical forces and new powers are emerging around the world. To be frank, we would be foolish to assume that we can continue to rely to the extent that we do on international talent for our mighty STEM workforce and enterprise. Right now, we're calling a lot of attention to the "missing millions" — and the critical need to ensure folks from underrepresented groups have pathways into the STEM workforce and its entire geography of innovation, from scientists and engineers to skilled technical workers. The investments that we make in our people — to develop our talent, our workforce and our science and technology capability — are how we are going to remain relevant, if not a superpower, on the global stage.
Q: In many ways, society is still in the process of discovery about neurodivergence and the unique capabilities of people who identify as neurodiverse. Can you talk about what is being learned and what is gained when opening career pathways to neurodivergent individuals?
A: When we talk about neurodivergence, there are a few things that are critical to acknowledge clearly and carefully. First, we must acknowledge that 15 to 20% of the human population is neurodiverse. It's not at all a small percentage of us. Second, we have to remember that every single one of us is unique and possesses a whole range of human abilities and challenges. Which is another way of saying there's no “automatic superpower” that comes with being autistic.
But that said, there is clear evidence that there is a high prevalence, especially among autistic people, of exceptional spatial and visual cognitive abilities. And it's interesting that something that can cause distress or even dysregulation in the context of a person's lived experience can, in another context, provide a way of seeing things, noticing patterns and outliers and making interconnections, literally in a multisensory way.
That duality is a somewhat poignant reflection of the work we're doing in neurodiversity-inspired science and engineering. Because yes, a lot of the research that we're doing in our NRT is developing technologies and scientific solutions to support and advance neurodiversity in the workforce, but it's also equally about learning from neurodivergent people. It is about having general solutions and approaches for science and engineering be inspired by the ways that many neurodiverse people see, think and feel the quantitative world.
Q: Can you share a bit more about your trainees? How do they come to this work? What kinds of research are they pursuing?
A: Approximately half of our trainees identify as neurodivergent, and half do not. But certainly, all our students have some personal connection to the challenges faced by those who are neurodiverse. And all of them want to learn and explore how their own science and engineering research could spark the development of new ways to amplify the unique capacities of neurodivergent individuals across the STEM fields.
One of our current trainees is finishing his doctorate in neuroscience. He is autistic, and one of the central parts of his own experience and existence has to do with what we, in everyday parlance, refer to as personal space. For many autistic people, there's a kind of heightened sensitivity that leads to feeling encroached upon, like it's an almost palpable discomfort. This sensitivity has been a central part of his experience as a living, breathing person; he plans his days around the spaces he'll be in and what he can tolerate based on it, so much so that he decided to make his dissertation topic around the neuroscience of this particular experience — about that mechanism in the brain and why and how it’s different for autistic people, but also for all different kinds of people.
He's focused on understanding how that kind of acute autistic experience may help us understand something more general about how the brain processes sensory information that manifests in this very real and human way. His neurodiverse experience inspired this very interesting, truly fundamental scientific question. What's more, when he finishes his doctorate, he will, to our knowledge, become the world's first autistic nonverbal neuroscientist. He relies on assistive technology for communication. It's incredible to think that 40 or even 30 years ago, this would not have been possible. And the genius and the creativity that's in that mind would not have been available to the rest of the world. And that's just one story; there are many more like his.
Q: Grounded in what you're learning, what will it take to increase the number of neurodiverse scientists in our STEM workforce?
A: We've been able to plug into a growing ecosystem of companies that are getting involved in neurodiversity and employment — and learning how we can help support the development of job opportunities available to autistic and other neurodivergent folks. And basically, we've learned that there are two major neurodiversity employment pipeline models that have emerged. Both are equally important and deserve our investment.
First, developing internships can provide a vital two-way learning experience — for neurodivergent trainees to gain workplace experience while giving companies and organizations a chance to develop the capacity to manage and support neurodivergent employees. Say you have a big company like Microsoft, and they decide they want to champion neurodiversity as part of their own workforce. We've been able to engage with companies like that by partnering to create internships for our trainees. A trainee gets experience that is beneficial to them, and, at the same time, the company and its managers and teams gain important experience working with people who are different.
I always speak very personally about this because it was only when I started to intentionally invite autistic students into my own research lab that I really learned how to be a more inclusive manager for all different kinds of people. I needed that direct experience to prepare everyone in my lab to understand people who might behave or interact differently so that everyone could bring their best selves and everyone could benefit. It's a kind of management style that draws on techniques and understandings that you only develop through doing it.
Q: And the second pipeline?
A: The second pipeline is the growing number of smaller business services companies that exclusively hire neurodiverse people, create workplaces to help them thrive and then contract with larger companies. So that if an autistic person has hypersensitivity of one kind or another, these companies can customize that person's workplace to ensure that it’s as accommodating as necessary in ways that a standard, corporate cubicle farm just can't do. Often, these companies provide wraparound support, from mental wellness resources to onsite job coaches, that can be essential in bringing out the capabilities and talents of neurodivergent employees.
One of these companies we've developed a strong relationship with, called The Precisionists Incorporated, has become an internship site for some of our neurotypical trainees who want the experience of being in a workplace where the tools that they're developing could be applied to help autistic people. For example, one of our trainees studying mechanical engineering developed a reality-based driving instruction system and took a prototype to the Precisionist offices here in Nashville to see how autistic adults on the job might benefit from having an on-site driving instruction experience.
We know the majority of autistic adults are not licensed to drive, but that gaining independence through transportation is essential to gaining access to and maintaining employment. This system is designed specifically for the autistic learner to be able to safely learn how to drive a car. Through this internship, this trainee is gaining key insights on how to improve the design of the system so that, ultimately, it can support more employers to provide a resource that is critical to neurodivergence folks thriving at work. That's the two-way street we're talking about.
Q: Though your NRT project itself is beginning to wind down, it seems to have been a springboard for good things.
A: It has, from the beginning. Early on, getting NRT was newsworthy enough that it helped inspire the Frist Family Foundation to help us launch the center. I know specifically that they were impressed by getting the NRT award and that it helped us create this unique interdisciplinary doctoral training. It was a concrete piece of what they saw as the potential for the center.
Since then, NRT has been so successful and so attractive to lots of graduate students here that we really wanted to find a way to institutionalize it — so that it is sustained well beyond the NRT funding. And I'm thrilled that we've succeeded in doing that in a number of ways. First, we have our graduate seminar courses that are on the books in the Vanderbilt graduate course catalog in a section called neurodiversity-inspired science and engineering. The graduate school officially recognizes the completion of those three courses, plus one elective, as fulfilling the requirements for a graduate certificate in neurodiversity-inspired science and engineering. Students get that formal recognition on their diplomas. The Frist Center now has a postdoctoral fellowship program, so we always have some number of autistic postdocs working in some area of science or engineering. All of that is baked in.
Going forward, we now have an endowment gift to enable the continuation of some number of fellowships associated with the program. But beyond that, I think we're now able to serve as an incubator for creating cutting-edge technologies that will elevate neurodiverse scientists in our STEM workforce and be able to serve as a connector and supporter, spurring the ideation and development of the most inventive ideas and solutions. NRT has been a big part of making that happen.