City Girl Interviews: Camilla Pang, Girl Power, Autism Awareness and Writing
Dr. Camilla Pang was recently awarded with Royal Society Prize for Science Books for her first book and a memoir Explaining Humans: What Science Can Teach Us about Life, Love and Relationships. Having always been fascinated with science, she received a PhD in computational biology at University College London where her work has been supervised by Christine Orengo.
When quoting strong female figures that have inspired to pursue her dreams, she mentioned her PhD supervisor and her mother as her everyday inspiration. Camilla also mentioned her sister who taught her it’s okay to be different, “She enabled me to keep the weirdness, she basically told me it’s great, to always be weird and not to be afraid of it.”
Camilla believes how support from the female community and friendships inspire her to be a better person. “I like friends that challenge me, I've got a friend that’s more empathetic, one that’s strategic and so on - that’s what I love about women I surround myself with, they all have different aspects of their character that completely inspire me everyday.”
Camilla was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder at the age of 8 and science helped her a lot to understand some of the life concepts. “Science acted as a template of thought for me. For example - a lot of the times when you communicate you subconsciously think what it means and you act accordingly - that isn’t there for me. What do I make with this information, do I just say it, do I respond, do I need to do something - there’s a lot of anxiety associated with it.”
In addition to her scientific research work and writing career, Camilla is hoping to inspire young women to study science. She’s also very open about her neurodiversity and advocates for awareness for autism amongst young women. She’s currently a trustee at a Lightyear Foundation charity that empowers neurodiverse people and provides a community for them.
Having been a woman in science, Camilla has seen that many women feel the need to flatter part of themselves to fit in and reduce their femininity so they can be validated. She hopes to inspire young women through her work to feel confident as themselves.
“There’s subconscious bias in people when they communicate with you, that they think because you look a certain way or speak in a certain way. That doesn’t have to do anything with yourself, but the other people. My advice does not suppress the part of yourself that feels natural to you, just to please others. Ultimately, that’s the magic.”
Although you probably won’t see her protesting out on the streets, Camilla is a big activist for the neurodiverse diversity and expresses her advocacy through her writing, “I do believe that work speaks for itself, so I’d like to think that writing is a form of advocating, it's an autistic voice and I hope that the more I write, the more I people I can reach and they can relate to it more.”
When asked what’s the key to her success, Camilla responded it was allowing herself to react - “If you don’t react you don’t have anything to go from, you just internalise everything and you get nothing back from yourself or the people.”
She believes that internalising everything isn’t a way to go about it, “ the thing that enabled me to do what I do is to let myself react and to retrospectively look at the situation, analyse it and look at it. It’s not about preventing the meltdown, it’s about doing it, living it and then writing about it.”
In her book, Explaining Humans: What Science Can Teach Us about Life, Love and Relationships, describes how she uses scientific algorithms to explain human relationships, social etiquette and perfectionism. “I found it so useful to translate from science to humans and from humans to science. For me, it’s all just one circle and I was just communicating with each layer. “
She also revealed her secret to be - writing and reading. “It took a lot of reading to get to this thinking. When I was younger, I had so many words on the tip of my tongue and I couldn’t express them, it’s only now I can say them out loud.”
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Written by Silvija Zabcic
