Inspiring Women in Science
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2024 Science Outreach Shortlist
Letetia Mary Addison of the Women in Data Science Trinidad and Tobago initiative.
Letetia Mary Addison of the Women in Data Science Trinidad and Tobago initiative.
The Women in Data Science Trinidad and Tobago (WiDS TT) initiative empowers women and girls through workshops, networking, and skills development. It promotes gender diversity in data science by providing resources, mentorship, and career opportunities, fostering collaboration with academia, industry, and local communities to bridge the gender gap in STEM.
Martha Alade of WITIN Girls STEM Clubs & Outreaches.
Martha Alade of WITIN Girls STEM Clubs & Outreaches.
WITIN Girls STEM Clubs & Outreaches provide hands-on STEM programs, mentorship, and resources for socio-economically disadvantaged girls in Nigeria. It aims to ignite girls’ interest in STEM, support them in pursuing careers, and nurture leadership potentials; ultimately contributing to long-term poverty reduction and closing the gender gap in STEM fields.
CARIRITEC promotes social inclusion through knowledge dissemination and stereotypes reduction in the Brazilian Northeast. The project aims to increase the number of women graduates in the areas of STEM through lectures, round tables, activities in the university, courses, visits to schools, workshops for undergraduate students, and activities on social networks.
Enhancing Women's Employment in Technology, an Internet Society initiative, empowers marginalized Zimbabwean women with hands-on tech training and connectivity. Since 2022, it has reached 2,155 people, with 56% female participation. Plans include training 2,200 students in 2024, scaling partnerships, and deploying Internet connectivity for sustainable growth in skills and career opportunities.
Melissa Monge of Red MenTe.
Melissa Monge of Red MenTe.
Red MenTe is a vibrant community empowering Costa Rican+ women in STEAM (1500 and counting!), from ages 7 to 30+. Through partnerships with tech companies, universities, and government, we provide continuous training and mentorship, inspiring women to pursue and thrive in STEAM careers and become changemakers.
Amena Karimyan of Kayhana astronomical group.
Amena Karimyan of Kayhana astronomical group.
Kayhana astronomical group is led by Amena Karimyan, the first female astronomer from Afghanistan. Amena has played a significant role in promoting astronomy education for Afghan girls and youth. Through online and in-person activities, Kayhana’s mission is to inspire curiosity about the universe and foster a sense of community among young astronomers despite societal challenges.
For 14 years, the Education & Cultural Society has championed STEM education in rural, marginalized, and low-tech communities across Bangladesh, empowering over 1.5 million girls and training 10,000 female teachers. By establishing 100+ STEM clubs, ECS fosters innovation, resilience, and leadership among girls, driving social change and advancing gender equality in STEM.
2024 Scientific Achievement Shortlist
Ana I. Benítez-Mateos is SNSF Ambizione Group Leader at ETH Zürich in Switzerland. Her research spans both fundamental and applied concepts, focusing on developing more sustainable and efficient biocatalytic reactions for the synthesis of pharmaceuticals, food additives, and fragrance compounds. Additionally, she is committed to science communication, mentoring young scientists, and advocating for female researchers.
Claire Chewapreecha’s research uses genomics to fight melioidosis, a neglected tropical disease with a 10-50% fatality rate. Based in Thailand, a hotspot for the disease, her team aims to identify bacterial and human genetic markers linked to disease acquisition and outcomes. This has recently led to the development of a DNA-based rapid diagnostic test, enabling faster detection and potentially saving lives.
Lana Josipović is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering at ETH Zurich. Her research aims to bridge the gap between software and hardware by developing language abstractions, compiler flows, and hardware devices that enable various users to accelerate emerging compute-intensive applications.
Thi Hoang Duong (Kelly) Nguyen completed her bachelor at the Australian National University and PhD at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge (MRC-LMB). She then became a Miller Research Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. She has been a group leader at the MRC-LMB since 2019.
Carolien van de Sandt, Senior Research Fellow at the Doherty Institute, University of Melbourne, leads the Lifespan Immunity Program, to unravel how virus-specific immunity is generated, maintained and lost. She aims to leverage this knowledge to restore immunity in at-risk populations. Carolien also has a passion for public outreach.
Simone Schürle is a biomedical engineer leading the Medical Microsystems Lab at ETH Zurich. Her team develops diagnostic and therapeutic systems at the nano- and microscale to address complex medical challenges. She is also the co-founder of MagnebotiX, a spin-off offering electromagnetic control systems for wireless micromanipulation in life science applications.
Where are they now: Tem Menina no Circuito
In October 2022, we were thrilled to announce Tem Menina no Circuito as the winners of our Science Outreach prize.
Based in Brazil, Tem Menina no Circuito empowers school-age girls to engage with STEM through a combination of hands-on experiments, field trips, and talks from female researchers.
Now, a year on from winning the award, we are excited to share an update from one of the founders Thereza Paiva on what they have been up to: how the award has impacted their activities, and what more they have planned for 2024 and beyond.
"It’s been a wonderful and very busy year since we won the Nature Awards for Inspiring Women in Science in 2022!
Winning the award made the national news in Brazil, with pieces of the award ceremony broadcast countrywide and additional coverage for Tem Menina no Circuito in newspapers, radio and science blogs. We’ve been invited to give talks, have been a panelist at the World Conference of Science Journalists, and have mediated round tables on Girls in Science organized by the United Nations’s Global Pact in Brazil at Petrobras and at the Rio Innovation Week.
In October 2022, we hosted a week of events during the National Week of Science and technology. With hands-on experiments and talks, we reached 1,500 students from low-income schools across the week. For Science Week in 2023, we opened our exposition “Check it out, it's all about women in Physics” to mark 10 years of Tem Menina no Circuito and 35 years of the Interactive Museum of Physics (LADIF). This is open to the public until June 2024 at Casa da Ciência, and the museum expects 30,000 visitors!
In November, we visited the historic city of Ouro Preto in Minas Gerais to host an outreach event celebrating the 10th anniversary of Tem Menina no Circuito. Being award winners really helped - we visited three schools, talked to school principals, and were even stopped on the street by an elderly lady who very happily told us she knew who we were and what we were up to! The award money helped make a larger event in May 2023 where we interacted with students via hands-on activities and experiments. This was a great opportunity for us to talk with many female researchers about what we do, and we hope they can start similar initiatives.
With the help of the award, we had the funds to move our LabMaker to the new Physics Institute building. Our new lab is 4 times bigger than our old one! We have hosted several events, including a very engaging talk from Deputy Physics Coordinator of LHCb at CERN, Carla Göbel on particle physics and career choices.
We have also reached out to Lia Medeiros and Natalia Mota, previous finalists from the Scientific Achievement category in the IWIS award. Lia kindly agreed to give a talk on the First Image of Black Holes to a group of 120 girls and became an instant hit. Natalia has relocated to Rio and does amazing research analyzing speech and speech markers. We have longer term plans with her and are really excited about collaborating further with her.
We have already started planning next year’s activities. We hired a designer to improve our media pages and make a new website to launch our new visual identity. Besides our regular activities in schools and preparation classes for senior high school girls, we are planning new activities. In the spring of 2024, we will have our first camp: a weekend of activities in the countryside with 50 girls. We are also working on an activity book that will be made available online for high-school teachers and faculty from other universities."
- Thereza Paiva, Co-Founder Tem Menina no Circuito
To find out more about Tem Menina no Circuito, visit their website, or follow them on Facebook, X (formerly known as Twitter), Instagram, or YouTube.
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