Dear Colleagues, 

I am pleased to include another issue of RFS Briefings with some timely and encouraging updates on women in science.

The 2nd Annual Rosalind Franklin Society (RFS) Awards in Science, recognizing outstanding peer-reviewed research by women and underrepresented minorities in STEM, have been released.The anthology of award winners is available digitally on the Rosalind Franklin Society website as well as in print.

Please continue to share important news and opportunities with us so that we may share it with you and others who are committed to supporting the careers of exceptional women in science.

Stay safe and sound,

 
Karla Shepard Rubinger
Executive Director
Rosalind Franklin Society
www.rosalindfranklinsociety.org

NIH selects Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. 

Lawrence A. Tabak, D.D.S., Ph.D., acting director for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has named Jeanne M. Marrazzo, M.D., as director of NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). Dr. Marrazzo is currently the director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She is expected to begin her role as NIAID Director in the Fall. Photo: New NIAID Director Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo (Credit: NIAID) Read more.

Michelson Philanthropies & Science Prize for Immunology.
Applications for the 2024 Prize will be accepted from May 1-October 1, 2023. This international prize is intended to encourage and support young investigators from a wide range of disciplines who apply their expertise to perform research that has a lasting impact on vaccine and immunotherapy. The prize will be awarded annually to one young scientist based on work done in the past 3 years. Read more.

The women behind the Manhattan Project that Nolan's new film 'Oppenheimer' completely ignored.
Here are the stories of just six of the hundreds of women that made essential contributions to the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos. The work of these women was essential to the story Christopher Nolan sought to tell — and yet, their voices remain mostly absent from the film. Read more.

The Arnold P. Gold Foundation names Kathleen Reeves, MD, third President & CEO.

Kathleen Reeves, MD, FAAP, a leader in urban bioethics, pediatrician, exemplar in humanism, and medical educator at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University, will become the next President & CEO of The Arnold P. Gold Foundation. Her appointment concludes a national search that began after Richard I. Levin, MD, announced that he was retiring after a 12-year tenure leading the nonprofit organization. Photo: Kathleen Reeves, MD (Credit: Temple University) Read more.

Move Over, Men: Women Were Hunters, Too.
Anthropologists are finding that women in modern foraging societies have played a major role in catching game. A team of researchers has published a literature review in PLoS One concluding that in most modern foraging societies, women have played a dominant role in bringing home the game. Read more.

Decoding the Universe at the New Center for Data-Driven Discovery. 

The Kavli Institute for ​the ​Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU) at the University of Tokyo has launched the Center for Data-Driven Discovery (CD3). Jia Liu, the inaugural director of CD3 and a Project Associate Professor at Kavli IPMU, says "Our mission is to 'decode the universe'––using ​software algorithms​ to understand the fundamental physical laws of the universe." Image: Center for Data-Driven Discovery (CD3) Director Jia Liu (Credit: Kavli IPMU). Read more.

In Memoriam: Evelyn Boyd Granville, 1924-2023.
Evelyn Boyd Granville, a research scientist, educator, and a major contributor to the United States space program, died at her home in Silver Springs, Maryland. She was 99 years old. Read more.

Tina Eliassi-Rad Honored by the CRT Foundation for Her Research on Artificial Intelligence.
Tina Eliassi-Rad,, a professor of computer science at Northeastern University, recently received the Lagrange Prize from the CRT Foundation in Turin Italy. The prize is considered the highest international recognition for scientists in the field of complex systems and data. Read more.

Bias in science: how to fight the good fight.
There is plenty of evidence to show that typically, women get smaller grants, their papers take longer in the editorial process and they need higher qualifications to reach the same professional level as men, says Athene Donald, author of a new book, Not Just for the Boys: Why We Need More Women in Science. Read more.

Nominations for the 2024 Alan T Waterman Award will be accepted from July 17 to September 15, 2023.
The Alan T. Waterman Award recognizes an outstanding young researcher in any field of science or engineering supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation. In addition to a medal, the awardee receives a grant of $1,000,000 over a five-year period for scientific research or advanced study in the science and engineering disciplines supported by the National Science Foundation at the institution of their choice. Read more.

Only 26 Black Women Have Ever Become Astrophysicists in the U.S. Here’s One’s Story. 

Aomawa Shields, a professor studying exoplanets at the University of California, Irvine, is one of just 26 Black female astrophysicists in American history. Shields says she wanted to write her book Life on Other Planets to show others what it took her a long time to learn: that dreams have no expiration date, that there is no one way to be a scientist and that if no role models can be found, you can be your own. Photo: Dr. Aomawa Shields. (Credit: University of California, Irvine.) Read more.

Children's Hospital LA Researcher Wins $2.8M NIH Grant for Retinoblastoma Liquid Biopsy Study.
Jesse Berry has been awarded a $2.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to conduct a prospective clinical study of a liquid biopsy to diagnose retinoblastoma. Berry, director of ocular oncology and the retinoblastoma program at CHLA, pioneered a liquid biopsy technique for sampling cell-free DNA in the aqueous humor, a pocket of liquid in the front of the eye. Read more.

HHMI Awards 50 New Gilliam Fellowships to Advance Equity and Inclusion in Science.
HHMI, a member of our Council of Academic Institutions, congratulates 50 graduate students and their advisers who have been named Gilliam Fellows in recognition of outstanding research in their respective scientific fields and their commitment to building a more inclusive scientific ecosystem. Each student-adviser pair will receive an annual award totaling $53,000 for up to three years. Doctoral researcher Anaïs Tsai and Whitehead Institute director Ruth Lehmann (RFS Board member) are recipients of a 2023 Howard Hughes Medical Institute Gilliam Fellowship for Advanced Study. Read more.

In Conversation with Nobel Laureate Frances Arnold.

What makes a brilliant scientist? Who are the people behind the greatest discoveries of our time? Connecting art and science, photographer Herlinde Koelbl seeks the answers in her book “Fascination of Science,” an indelible collection of portraits of and interviews with 60 pioneering scientists of the 21st century. Read more. Image: Frances Arnold at Caltech in 2021 by Christopher Michel (Wikipedia)

This Lost Woman of the Manhattan Project Saw the Deadly Effects of Nuclear Radiation Up Close.
In this episode of Lost Women of Science, hear about Floy Agnes Lee, known as Aggie, who was a hematology technician at Los Alamos. Recruited to the Manhattan Project straight out of college, she collected blood samples from many Manhattan Project scientists, including the renowned physicist Enrico Fermi. Years after the war, she returned to Los Alamos National Laboratory to study the effects of radiation on the human body. Read more.

The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters has announced The Kavli Prize Call for Nominations. 
Through October 1, 2023, you are invited to nominate scientists whose basic research has fundamentally transformed the fields of astrophysics, nanoscience and neuroscience – the big, the small, and the complex. The prize consists of $1 million awards in each of the three fields. Read more.

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