RFS Briefings - May 2017

May 2017 issue of RFS Briefing has some timely and encouraging updates on women in science, particularly:

Congress Totally Ignored Trump's Cuts to NIH Funding. theatlantic.com, May 1, 2017
Despite Trump's proposed cuts to the National Institutes of Health, Congress has allocated an additional $2 billion to the agency between now and the end of the fiscal year, targeting research in Alzheimer's disease as well as Obama's big science projects − the Precision Medicine Initiative and the BRAIN Initiative. Another increase is possible once Congress addresses 2018 spending.

Rosalind Franklin Award at 2017 BIO World Congress on Industrial Biotechnology Plenary Program, bio.org, March 21, 2017
The 2017 BIO World Congress on Industrial Biotechnology Plenary Program will take place July 23-26, 2017 in Montreal. Since 2014, the Rosalind Franklin Society has been proud to sponsor the Rosalind Franklin Award, established to honor an outstanding woman in the field of biotechnology Attendees can network with 1,000 global business leaders, investors, and policy makers, participate in sessions and education tracks, and more.

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RFS Briefings - March 2017

March 2017 issue of RFS Briefing has some timely and encouraging updates on women in science, particularly:

Mildred Dresselhaus, the Queen of Carbon, Dies at 86, nytimes.com, February 23, 2017
Mildred Dresselhaus, a professor emerita at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, helped transform carbon into the superstar of modern materials science and was renowned for her efforts to promote the cause of women in science. She spoke at a Rosalind Franklin Society Board Meeting. Read more.

Special Women in Science Section in the Journal of Women's Health, Journal of Women's Health (Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers), April 2017. In press
The forthcoming April 2017 issue of the Journal of Women's Health, published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., will have a special section on Women's Careers in the Biomedical Sciences. The section will include 7 papers and an NIH Commentary–" Women's Careers in the Biomedical Sciences: Implications for the Economy, Scientific Discovery, and Women's Health." Mary Ann Liebert is founder of the Rosalind Franklin Society.

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RFS Briefings - February 2017

February 2017 issue of RFS Briefing has some timely and encouraging updates on women in science, particularly:

The Foundation for Gender-Specific Medicine and Gender and the Genome Announce the Robert S. Birch Award Competition, liebertpub.com, January 27, 2017
The Foundation for Gender-Specific Medicine and Gender and the Genome (Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers) announced the Robert S. Birch Award, a prize of $25,000. The intent of the new prize is to encourage submissions of original research or scholarly legal/ethical commentary of the highest quality concerning the relevance of biological sex/gender to cutting edge 21st-century science for publication in Gender and the Genome. The submission deadline is September 30, 2017.

If You Want to Live Longer, Take Good Care of your Telomeres, washingtonpost.com, January 13, 2017
Molecular biologist Elizabeth Blackburn, RFS board member and President of the Salk Institute, and two colleagues won the Nobel Prize in 2009 for the discovery of telomerase, the enzyme that replenishes the bits of DNA on either end of your chromosomes and are often compared to the plastic caps on shoelaces. What happens when you let the shoelace caps wear down from use?

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RFS Briefings - December 2016

Our December 2016 issue of RFS Briefing has some timely and encouraging updates on women in science, particularly:

$25 Million in Breakthrough Prizes Given in Science and Math, nytimes.com, December 4, 2016
Huda Zoghbi, MD, professor of neurology at Baylor College of Medicine, Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, director of the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute at Texas Children's Hospital, and Rosalind Franklin Society Board Member, was recognized by the Breakthrough Foundation for her work with a prize of $3 million. She discovered that a mutation to a gene known as SCA1 causes Spinocerebellar ataxia, a neurodegenerative disorder.

Mina Bissell, PhD Receives ASCB's highest scientific honor, the 2016 E.B. Wilson Medal, http://www.ascb.org, November 15, 2015
Dr. Bissell, RFS Board Member, is the 2016 winner of the E.B. Wilson award for science, presented on December 6 at annual meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology. In a "very personal essay," published in Molecular Biology of the Cell (Volume 27, November 1, 2016), she describes the honor of winning the award as "truly humbling," and shares the joys and challenges she has experienced as a woman scientist. This paper is dedicated "'To the memory of Susan Lindquist, the most prophetic, distinguished, passionate and original scientist of our era.'" Dr. Lindquist, who died on October 27, 2016, was an RFS Board Member.

Howard Hughes Medical Institute Hanna H. Gray Fellows Program, hhmi.org, November 8, 2016
Through the new Hanna H. Gray Fellows Program, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) seeks to increase diversity in the biomedical research community. HHMI will recruit and retain individuals from groups underrepresented in the life sciences. The application deadline is February 15, 2016 at 3:00 p.m. (Eastern Time).

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