Briefings

Dear Colleagues, 

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

Despite the tough market conditions for the industry over the past 2–3 years, the biotechnology sector is poised for big things moving forward. Exciting advances in precision genome editing, cell therapy, synthetic biology, organs-on-chips, next-gen sequencing and artificial intelligence all bode well for the development of new therapies and the health of patients and the industry.

In The State of Biotech 2023—sponsored exclusively by Cytiva—GEN proudly brings together a host of luminaries from industry and academia to discuss the latest research developments, innovations and disruptive technologies that will spur biotech forward to bigger and better things. Register now.

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

Announcing the 2023 Rita Allen Foundation Scholars.
Congratulations to the 2023 Rita Allen Foundation Scholars! Three of the nine scholars are exceptional early-career women in science. The selected Scholars will receive grants of up to $110,000 annually for a maximum of five years to conduct innovative research on critical topics in cancer, immunology, neuroscience, and pain. Read more.

Celebrating the Establishment of the David Baltimore Chair in Biomedical Research.

Please join the Whitehead Institute community on Friday, September 22, 2023, as they honor Biologist, Nobelist, and California Institute of Technology President Emeritus, David Baltimore, Founding Director of Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. Congratulations to Mary Gehring, Whitehead Institute Member and Inaugural Incumbent of the David Baltimore Chair in Biomedical Research. Read more. Image: Mary Gehring, Whitehead Institute.

Double helix double crossing? What really happened between Rosalind Franklin, James Watson and Francis Crick?
Dr. Kat Arney sits down for a chat with Professor Matthew Cobb to get the inside track on what really happened between James Watson, Francis Crick and Rosalind Franklin during the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA. Read more. In this webinar—the first in a “Women in Science” series co-hosted by GEN and the Rosalind Franklin Society—British biologist and author Dr. Matthew Cobb explored Franklin’s contribution to DNA structure and how they have been seen in popular culture. Read more.

This book dissects the years-long battle for gender equality at MIT. 
In their pursuit of science and discovery, the few female scientists at MIT in the late 20th century found themselves faced with hurdles related to their gender, rather than their research. So they did what scientists do: they quantified it. One journalist took notice. Read more. Please watch Kate Zernike's interview from the RFS 2022 Year-end meeting, 

Michelson Philanthropies & Science Prize for Immunology. 
Apply today for the 2023 Michelson Philanthropies & Science Prize for Immunology! This honor was created to support and reward young investigators who demonstrate expertise with the potential for lasting impact on vaccine and immunotherapy discovery. Read more.

Karmella Haynes Leads Exploration of the Genome’s Dark Regions.

Biomedical engineer Karmella Haynes is leading a team of multi-disciplinary investigators who were awarded a four-year, $2.1 million grant from the National Science Foundation to explore the dark matter of the genome. Read more. Image: Emory University & Georgia Institute of Technology.

Female scientists found to be almost entirely absent from Australian high school curriculum.
Female scientists are almost entirely omitted from Australian curriculum, a new study has found, with researchers warning the “alarming” lack of representation could be contributing to the gender gap in the field of STEM. Read more.

Patients have better outcomes with female surgeons, studies find.
People who are operated on by female surgeons are less likely to experience complications and need follow-up care than when males wield the scalpel, according to two major studies that suggest male surgeons have important lessons to learn. Read more.

The Making of an Ivy League President: Two Women’s Stories.

In “Necessary Trouble,” by Drew Gilpin Faust, and “Up Home,” by Ruth J. Simmons, the former presidents of Harvard and Brown recount their unlikely paths to leadership at two of America’s most elite universities. Read more. (Image: Left: Drew Gilpin Faust, President, Harvard University, USA makes a point during the session 'Women in Economic Decision-making' at the Annual Meeting 2013 of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 25, 2013. Copyright by World Economic Forum. swiss-image.ch/Photo Michael Wuertenberg. Right: Dr. Ruth J. Simmons speaking at the National Press Club. Wikipedia.)

WINGS WorldQuest invites you and your guests to join them for the 20th Anniversary WINGS Women of Discovery Awards Gala.
The WINGS Women of Discovery Awards were established in 2003 to recognize extraordinary women making significant contributions to world knowledge and science through exploration. Join them October 12, 2023, in NYC at 583 Park Avenue for a truly unforgettable evening honoring our five pioneering 2023 Women of Discovery, their groundbreaking work, and their unceasing quest to build a better world for us all. Read more.

This archeologist reconstructs the past with animal bones.
Archaeologist Pamela Akuku studies ancient animal bones to learn more about how early humans lived. She’s currently studying remains from Tanzania’s Olduvai Gorge (funded by SSHRC and the Leakey Foundation), where researchers previously discovered stone tools and evidence of early human ancestors going back as far as 2 million years. In this interview, Akuku shares her experiences and advice with Science News Explores. Read more.

Adele Wolfson Recognized for Her Work to Advance the Careers of Women in Biochemistry/Molecular Biology. 
Adele J. Wolfson, a professor emerita of chemistry and natural and physical sciences at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, received the Sustained Leadership Award from the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Read more.

Interview: Loren Grush on Nasa’s first female astronauts: ‘People thought they’d be a distraction to the men in space’. 
The science reporter reveals the astonishing truth behind the stories in her new book, The Six, which follows the first women inducted into Nasa’s astronaut program in 1978. Read more.

Rosalind Brewer Steps Down as Walgreens Chief After a Short Tenure.

The company said the decision for Ms. Brewer to depart was mutual. She was one of the few women running a Fortune 500 company, and when she was appointed she was the only Black woman to hold that position. Read more.Image: Business Wire.

 

 

Subscribe to our newsletter (RFS Briefings) at Rosalind Franklin Society | Substack 


Marianna Limas, Social Media Manager
Nilda Rivera, Partnership and Events Manager

 

Dear Colleagues, 

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

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

National Cancer Institute (NCI) Director, Monica M. Bertagnolli, M.D., Selected as Recipient of the 2023 AIM-HI Beacon Award for Women Leaders in Oncology.

The AIM-HI Accelerator Fund (AIM-HI) announced the recipient of the 2023 AIM-HI Beacon Award for Women Leaders in Oncology as Monica M. Bertagnolli, M.D., Director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI). She was a speaker at the RFS year-end conference last year. The Beacon Award recognizes outstanding women leaders in the health and life sciences industry who have made a significant impact on advancing and advocating cancer treatment, detection, and diagnosis for patients around the world. Read more. Image: Monica M. Bertagnolli, M.D., Director, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health.

Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund for Medical Research Postdoctoral Fellowships.
The application cycle for the next round of Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund for Medical Research Postdoctoral Fellowships opens on October 10th. Please spread the word to postdocs (and soon to be postdocs) in biomedical sciences. Inspired by the founding purpose to support research into the causes and treatment of cancer, the Fund’s mission has broadened to support fundamental scientific research that advances our understanding of the causes, treatments, and cures for human disease. Read more.

Erin Stache Receives DOE Early Career Award.

Erin Stache, an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry and one of its newest faculty members, has been awarded funding for next-generation STEM leaders from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science Early Career Research Program. Read more. Image: Assistant Professor of Chemistry Erin Stache (Photo courtesy of the Stache Lab)

Why two scientist-mums made a database of parental-leave policies.
By scouring websites and pestering university human-resources departments, Amanda Gorton and Tess Grainger are tracking the vast differences in leave entitlements across North America. “Our hope is that these data can help prospective parents to chart their career paths in academia while building their families. We also hope that it will spur universities to thoroughly examine their own parental-leave policies in comparison to those of other institutions.” Read more.

Women CEOs run 10.4% of Fortune 500 companies. A quarter of the 52 leaders became CEO in the last year.
Few women of color lead Fortune 500 companies. Walgreens Boots Alliance CEO Roz Brewer and TIAA chief Thasunda Brown Duckett remain the only two Black female CEOs among this cohort. Read more. 

The Gray Foundation Announces $25 Million in New Funding for BRCA-Related Cancer Research.
The new grants are part of the Foundation’s ongoing Team Science program, which funds innovative BRCA-related collaborative research. For this cycle, the research teams were selected from more than 55 applications through an extensive evaluation led by Chi Van Dang, MD, PhD, Chief Science Advisor for the Gray Foundation, supported by a review committee composed of leading experts in the field. Read more. 

NYSCF Innovator Malin Parmar’s Investigational Cell Therapy for Parkinson’s Reaches First Patient In Clinical Trial.

STEM-PD, a investigational cell therapy developed by NYSCF – Robertson Stem Cell Investigator Alumna Malin Parmar, PhD, of Lund University, reached its first patient as part of a clinical trial in Sweden. Read more. Image: Malin Parmar, PhD, The New York Stem Cell Foundation.

A Harvard President’s Reflections on a Southern Girlhood.
As president of Harvard University from 2007 to 2018, Drew Gilpin Faust was the first woman to occupy the highest bully pulpit of American higher education. In “Necessary Trouble,” Drew Gilpin Faust wrestles with her conservative Southern upbringing, and the unfinished business of the Civil War. Read more. 

Science experiments traditionally only used male mice – here’s why that’s a problem for women’s health.
Scientists long assumed that females would respond the same way as males in drug trials. But today, that situation is changing. More and more studies use both female and male animals – and new science is emerging about important sex differences as a result. Read more. 

Prehistoric women may have invented this ingenious stone age hunting weapon.
An ancient weapon known as an atlatl may have been used by prehistoric women to launch projectiles with the same force as men, thereby enabling them to take over hunting duties. Read more. 

As recently reported in the Women in Academia Report, we want to congratulate three impressive new university leaders. 
Pamela J. Haney, PhD, President, Moraine Valley Community College in Palos Hills (left)
Valerie Kinloch, President, PhD, Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, North Carolina (center)
Michele Carter, PhD, Chancellor,  Central Texas College in Killeen (right)

 

 

 

 

Subscribe to our newsletter (RFS Briefings) at Rosalind Franklin Society | Substack 


Marianna Limas, Social Media Manager
Nilda Rivera, Partnership and Events Manager

 

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.

Subscribe to our newsletter (RFS Briefings) at Rosalind Franklin Society | Substack  


Marianna Limas, Social Media Manager
Nilda Rivera, Partnership and Events Manager

 

Dear Colleagues, 

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

An important birthday to remember…


On July 25, 1920, X-ray crystallographer Rosalind Elsie Franklin was born in London. Her untimely death on April 16, 1958 at age 37 was surely a tragedy for science, and humanity. Franklin’s work was critical in the discovery of DNA and RNA. She never received the recognition she deserved and died of ovarian cancer four years before the Nobel Prize was awarded to Watson and Crick. They unfortunately did not give her the credit we now know was hers. Read more.

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




On July 15, we wished a very happy birthday to Dr. Brenda Milner, who at 105 is still working at her prestigious neuroscience institute in Montreal! Here is a previous presentation from Dr. Brenda Milner at RFS.

Rosalind Franklin Society Awards Recognize Outstanding Contributions from Women and Minorities.
The 2022 Rosalind Franklin Society (RFS) Awards in Science, recognizing outstanding peer-reviewed research by women and underrepresented minorities in STEM, have been announced. The anthology of award winners is available digitally on the Rosalind Franklin Society website as well as in print. The book is a remarkable compendium of research in science, engineering, and medicine that has been accomplished by outstanding investigators. Read more.

The Genome Writers Guild (GWG) and Rosalind Franklin Society have joined forces again.

The Genome Writers Guild (GWG) and Rosalind Franklin Society have joined forces again to recognize amazing scientists by awarding the Rosalind Franklin Medal. This is our annual award to women working in the fields of genome engineering and synthetic biology and researchers in the early stage of their careers.

Congratulations to the RFS Medal Winner, Grace McAuley, and the finalists Dr. Mandana Arbab and Dr. Katie Galloway.

 

Evelyn M. Witkin, Who Discovered How DNA Repairs Itself, Dies at 102.
in a career that began at the dawn of modern genetic research in the late 1940s, Dr. Witkin explored the ways in which radiation both damaged DNA and generated a repair mechanism, what she came to call the SOS response. Her research shed new light on how solar radiation and chemicals in the environment impact our genetic makeup. Read more.

How centuries of sexism excluded women from science — and how to redress the balance.
Not Just for the Boys is an enjoyable and useful primer on the challenges faced by women in STEM. Athene Donald, an experimental physicist at the University of Cambridge, UK, and a leading authority on gender-equity issues, draws evidence from history, neuroscience and social science to explain why gender bias is rife in STEM. Read more.

NASA chief Kate Calvin discusses how climate change is affecting everyday life.

Kate Calvin, NASA chief scientist and climate adviser, breaks down on "Face the Nation" how climate change is driving some of the most recent weather and health events. Read more. Image: NASA/Bill Ingalls.

Female physicists aren’t represented in the media – and this lack of representation hurts the physics field.
As a physics professor who studies ways to support women in STEM fields and a film studies professor who worked as a screenwriter in Hollywood, Chandralekha Singh and Carl Kurlander believe the movie Oppenheimer’s depiction of women reinforces stereotypes about who can succeed in science. It also represents a larger trend of women’s contributions in science going unrecognized in modern media. Read more.

Science’s gender gap: the shocking data that reveal its true extent.
Until the 2000s, women were under-represented, but in the past 20 years, women have been advantaged relative to similarly credentialed men in psychology, economics and mathematics. Equity for Women in Science is a convincing reply to those who advance such arguments. Less overt — all but invisible — gender gaps are still with us. Read more.

An Astrobiologist’s Search for Life in Space—and Meaning on Earth.

Aomawa Shields, an astrobiologist at UC Irvine, studies distant worlds using computer models to evaluate their climates and assess whether they might be friendly to alien life. In her new book out, Life on Other Planets, she discusses her scientific work, as well as her own experiences as one of the few Black women in physics and astronomy and as a classically trained actor who completed her master of fine arts degree at UCLA. Read more. Image: NASA.

IGI’s Women in Enterprising Science Program Welcomes Four New Fellows.
The Innovative Genomics Institute (IGI) welcomed a new cohort of Fellows for the HS Chau Women in Enterprising Science Program (WIES), a unique program designed to promote gender equity in bio-entrepreneurship.The Fellows will be provided with up to $150,000 in support for the first year to develop their research into an early-stage entrepreneurial concept. Read more.

Keystone Symposia celebrates their 50th anniversary.
Join Keystone Symposia (a member of the Rosalind Franklin Society, Council of Academic Institutions) for their Upcoming Conferences in the Field of Cardiovascular Biology. Under the leadership of CEO Dr. Deborah Johnson, these symposia are true game-changers! Read more.

Cutting the gender employment gap in half could boost global GDP by 6%.
Fifteen years after producing a key report on women in the global workforce, Goldman Sachs Research finds there’s been progress since then in women’s education and participation in the job market. But even so, gender gaps in pay and employment are still persistent. Read more.

The CDC is in crisis — can its new leader save it?

Mandy Cohen, a physician who served as North Carolina’s health secretary until the end of 2021, started her tenure as CDC director. Cohen takes over the role previously filled by Rochelle Walensky, an infectious-disease specialist who left the CDC less than a year after announcing an initiative to overhaul the agency’s structure and operations. Read more. Image: North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), UNC Public Health.

How To Address Women Facing Ageism At Each And Every Stage Of Their Career.
The benefit of a multi-generational workforce means that we can utilize and learn from different perspectives. One isn’t better than the other, but together, give us unique insights in how best to create technologies and solutions for society - an incredibly diverse group. Read more.

Meet the 2023 Winners of the McNulty Prize.
The McNulty Foundation and the Aspen Institute announced the three winners of the 2023 John P. McNulty Prize, each of whom will receive $150,000 towards their organization. Their transformative social ventures address three of the most important issues of this generation, from revolutionizing mental healthcare, to addressing the global plastic crisis, to restoring the promise of economic mobility. Read more.

Meet DRDRI’s new director.

Dominique Pichard has been selected as NCATS’ Director of the Division of Rare Diseases Research Innovation (DRDRI). She will guide and coordinate collaborative research and patient engagement efforts to speed rare disease diagnosis, treatment, and care. Her research has focused on identifying new treatments and improving clinical trial design for rare diseases. Since 2019, she has served as the Chief Science Officer at the International Rett Syndrome Foundation. She will officially join the team on September 11. Read more. Image: The International Rett Syndrome Foundation.

Sitting Down With… Theresa Heah, CEO, Intergalactic Therapeutics, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Theresa Heah, CEO of Intergalactic Therapeutics, is leading a team working tirelessly to advance safer, more effective, more versatile, and more accessible solutions to address ophthalmological disorders and beyond. Read more.

What the Film Oppenheimer Probably Will Not Talk About: The Lost Women of the Manhattan Project.
Hundreds of the scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project were women. They were physicists, chemists, engineers and mathematicians. The Lost Women of Science initiative brings you the story of one of them. Read more.

Attention all allies: why there are so few women in science and how you can help.
Despite years of campaigning, women are still wildly under-represented in science. According to UNESCO, only one third of scientific researchers are female. In physics, the imbalance is even starker, with women making up under a quarter of undergraduate physicists in the UK and only 10% of physics professors. Read more.

Applications Open for the 2023 IAEA Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship Programme.
Named after the pioneering physicist and twice Nobel Prize laureate, Marie Sklodowska-Curie, the MSCFP encourages women to enter and pursue careers in the nuclear field by providing scholarships for tuition and living costs along with internship opportunities. Read more.

New Voices in Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.
The application for the next cohort of New Voices members is now open! This is a cohort-based leadership program that promotes collaboration among outstanding early- and mid-career scientists, engineers, and medical professionals. Read more.

Eunice Newton Foote's 204th Birthday.
This slideshow Doodle celebrates the 204th birthday of American scientist and women’s rights activist Eunice Newton Foote. Foote was the first person to discover the greenhouse effect and its role in the warming of Earth’s climate. Read more.

Subscribe to our newsletter (RFS Briefings) at Rosalind Franklin Society | Substack  


Marianna Limas, Social Media Manager
Nilda Rivera, Partnership and Events Manager

 

Dear Colleagues, 

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

Women and girls must be at the center of health innovation to ensure all people can live healthy and productive lives. The National Institutes of Health and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation co-hosted the Innovation Equity Forum last week to map out global opportunities to advance women's health equity. Women's health - from contraception to maternal care to basic research - demands urgent attention and funding to ensure that women, everywhere, can remain in good health. When women thrive, we all thrive. Last week, we joined women's health experts to discuss challenges and opportunities to accelerate progress on women's health. I was thrilled to be part of the Steering Committee (left, below) and working with Jamie White, Health Science Strategy and Relations Lead, at ORWH (right, below). This discussion will help set the stage for the Grand Challenges discussions in October in Senegal. Stay tuned!

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

These researchers are reimagining animal behavior through a feminist lens.
Evolutionary biologist Ambika Kamath and social scientist Melina Packer of the University of Colorado Boulder are working to dismantle outdated, biased scientific ideas through research and a new curriculum. Read more.

3 UK universities nurturing a new generation of female engineers.
As the demands for STEM careers grow, where should aspiring female engineers study engineering? If you’re looking for an empowering education in engineering that’ll inspire you to be a global changemaker, here are four universities to consider. Read more.

Carol Robinson Inducted into Prestigious American Philosophical Society (APS) for 2023.

Dame Carol Robinson, the Dr. Lee's Professor of Chemistry and Director of the Kavli Institute for Nanoscience Discovery at Oxford University, has received recognition for her pioneering work in mass spectrometry techniques spanning more than three decades. Her research has revolutionized our understanding of protein structures and interactions, particularly in relation to diseases. Read more. Image credit: Kavli Institute for Nanoscience Discovery

New method offers unprecedented detail in tracking protein activity in living cells.
Vilcek Creative Promise Prize-winning scientist Alice Ting of Stanford is the lead author on a new study published in Cell Press News that outlines a revolutionary technique for tracking protein activity in living cells. Read more.

Understanding the role of KMT2D in MLL-AF9 acute myeloid leukemia. 

Nicole Cruz, with mentor Robert G. Roeder, at The Rockefeller University, New York, received the latest Mark Foundation for Cancer Research Physician-Scientist award in partnership with Damon Runyon. Read more. Image credit: Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation & The Mark Foundation.

The Warren Alpert Distinguished Scholar Awards.
The Warren Alpert Distinguished Scholars Fellowship Award submission period is now OPEN. The Award will support individual postdoctoral scientists of exceptional creativity in the field of neurosciences. The new enrollment period will run from June of 2023 to November 1, 2023. Read more.

Wistar Institute Study Gives New Insight into How Cancer Metastasizes to the Brain.

 A new study by Wistar scientists published in Nature Communications shows that a type of brain cell called astrocytes plays an important role in promoting brain metastasis by recruiting a specific subpopulation of immune cells. The finding could be a first step toward identifying potential targets for therapies to fight cancers that metastasize to the brain. This would fill a significant unmet need, said researcher Qing Chen, M.D., Ph.D. Read more. Image credit: Wistar Institute.

The V Foundation for Cancer Research Announces the First Class of A Grant of Her Own: The Women Scientists Innovation Award for Cancer Research.
This landmark initiative is helping to counteract longstanding gender disparities in research by investing $8 million in the groundbreaking work of 11 women scientists leading the charge in cancer research. Read more.

Carolyn Kraus receives competitive Ruth L. Kirschstein award.


Carolyn Kraus, a PhD candidate in the Morningside Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences Interdisciplinary Graduate Program, has received a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award Individual Predoctoral Fellowship from the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases to study how CRISPR/Cas9 tools can be used to develop a therapeutic for Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Read more. Image credit: UMass Chan Medical School.

Women in STEM: An Inspiring Journey with Dr. Jo Brewer.
“At school I was encouraged to follow science because I was good at it. It felt natural to follow what I was good at, and they pushed everybody to be the best they could be. That’s how I was brought up. Later in my career, having a family and children also caused some good and bad experiences. When I went on maternity leave with my first child, that was a really good experience because I was one of four mothers in a company of about 40 people. We all went on maternity leave at the same time. We were all encouraged to come back on our own terms because we were all really valued. And that was fantastic,” says Dr. Jo Brewer, Chief Scientific Officer at Adaptimmune. Read more.

No drug for COVID: ‘the most successful failure in my life’
Laura Walker tells Nature why she moved to industry after her PhD in immunology and microbiology, and the challenges of developing a drug during a global pandemic. In March, Laura Walker left the biopharmaceutical company she had co-founded three years earlier to join Moderna as the head of its infectious disease biotherapeutics team in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Read more.

Unraveling connections between the brain and gut.


Under the direction of Vilcek Creative Promise Prizewinner Polina Anikeeva, MIT  engineers have designed optogenetic techniques for probing connections between the gut and the brain. In a new study, the researchers demonstrated that they could induce feelings of fullness or reward-seeking behavior in mice by manipulating cells of the intestine. Read more. Image credit: National Science Foundation (Wikipedia)

Interview: Women in Science - Pamela Adede and her hope for future generations of women to thrive in science. 
Pamela Adede is a seasoned computer scientist and data professional known for providing high quality service whilst employing her multi talents which include efficiency, analytical thinking, and fast learning. Read more.

Don’t get mad, get equal: putting an end to misogyny in science.
“Surviving as a woman in science shouldn’t be such a perilous and exhausting high-wire balancing act. We will all be more powerful and effective when female leaders are supported to be equitable participants in the diverse and holistic scientific organizations of the future,” Alison Bentley & Rachael Garrett write in an article for Nature News. Read more.

Interview ‘Designing a vaccine that covers all cancers is hard’: biotech pioneer Lindy Durrant.

“Cancer is my game,” says Prof. Lindy Durrant, an immunologist, founder and chief executive of Scancell, which is developing vaccines that could offer a needle-free protection against Covid as well as novel treatments against cancer. The immunologist who runs Scancell is trialing novel treatments to attack tumors, as well as needle-free Covid jabs. Read more. Image credit: University of Nottingham.

Women in Science: How Charco Neurotech's Lucy Jung is 'restoring joy' for Parkinson's patients.
Lucy Jung is the CEO and founder at Charco Neurotech, a medtech start-up which has developed the CEU1, a wearable device for Parkinson's, that uses vibrotactile stimulation to reduce symptoms of slowness and stiffness - resulting in improved movement. Biopharma Reporter spoke to her about her background, how she got involved in the Parkinson's space and her fascination for problem-solving. Read more.

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