Black Lives Matter

We stand for social justice.

RadiaSoft believes in equality and justice for every person, of every race, gender, sexual orientation, and all of the myriad identities, experiences, and perspectives that make us human.

To turn that belief into action, we work across multiple channels, with the resources that we have, to reduce inequality, to provide access and opportunity, and to further the cause of social justice.  

We educate ourselves about the inequities and injustices around us and work to eliminate the barriers and structures impeding equality for all.

We share our wealth and knowledge with organizations and in communities working to make our society a better, more equal place.

We use our time to take deliberate action against racism and social injustice.

We consider the wider ramifications of our scientific work and attempt to ensure that the impact is consistent with our social justice values.

We have formed a Social Justice Committee to coordinate our efforts and help clarify our values. We welcome new voices and new opportunities to support social justice. Please join us in whichever ways you can and feel free to reach out to us through our contact page. 

Get Educated

Knowing our history is key to changing our future. Many resources are available for educating ourselves and helping us to learn from the past, leading to active, positive changes going forward. We’re reading to become better informed about the issues at hand and how we can best contribute to resolving them. Here are a few resources that RadiaSoft personnel have recently studied. We encourage everyone to read these, as well as many other options for education about these issues.

  • White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo

    • Ms. DiAngelo, who is white, addresses the toxic and paralyzing fragility of white people when it comes to even attempting to address the existence of racism and race-based systems of social hierarchy.

    • White Fragility insists that only after we face the truth of systemic racism, and white people’s role in maintaining that system, can we take the necessary steps to overcome it. 

  • How To Be An Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi

    • Ibram Kendi posits that there are no “nonracists.” There are only racists and those actively working to dismantle racism: antiracists. 

    • It’s our responsibility to face the difficult concepts of our own complicity in racist systems and consciously work against them.

  • The Sum of Us, by Heather McGhee

    • McGhee, an expert in economic and social policy, has produced an extraordinarily readable discussion of the economic and social costs of racism as it affects not just people of color, but as it affects all of us.

    • Using both insightful analysis and engaging stories about herself and others, McGhee shows how the Zero-Sum Paradigm—the idea that progress for some must come at the expense of others—damages all of us in terms of education, health care, political representation, the environment, and much else.

    • Her uplifting message is that racial unity, when it has occurred, has yielded a Solidarity Dividend, which will only grow as more of us unite and work together.

  • Coded Bias, a documentary by Shalini Kantayya

    • The documentary covers issues in algorithmic bias: ways in which bias can be built into the algorithms that make more and more important decisions in society today.

    • Joy Buolamwini, who founded the Algorithmic Justice League shows how facial recognition software was built by a largely white engineering world failed to take darker skin tone adequately into account, resulting in bad performance and unjust outcomes when applied to non-white subjects. When attention was given to this issue, the major creators of facial recognition software were able to make substantial improvements.

    • Other examples of algorithmic bias are drawn from the domains of education and finance, showing the broad impact of AI and ML technologies and the need to pay attention to how they are made and what goals and biases are built in.

Share Wealth

As an organization that works in the field of physics, we believe that visibility and support for women and underrepresented groups is crucial for recruiting talent and building a career pipeline that will strengthen the discipline of physics as a whole. We have chosen to financially support these organizations because of their dedication to women and BIPOC representation in advanced physics. 

  • African American Women in Physics

    • From Katherine Johnson to Dr. Jami Valentine, AAWIP represents the many African-American women who have done invaluable work from landing Americans on the moon to leading research at the National Institutes of Health. 

  • National Society of Black Physicists

    • The NSBP promotes efforts to increase visibility and opportunity for African Americans in physics and to support the recognition of their scientific work. 

Take Action

We use corporate policy to support our employees’ engagement with social justice efforts. 

  • Employees are given eight paid hours for volunteering per quarter and encouraged to use them for the project that they feel most passionate about. Some examples of our employees’ efforts have included

  • RadiaSoft scientists mentor high schoolers in Denver Public Schools because we believe that

    • Science is for everyone, but access to science education is not equally accessible to all

    • STEM education is the key to many careers that don’t exist yet, but will in the future, and we’re dedicated to helping today’s youth prepare for them.

Further Resources

We are based in Boulder, Colorado and these are some ways that we can act locally to redirect our dollars and our time towards the cause of social justice.