L’Oréal-UNESCO Prize for Women in Science 2021

This year’s L’Oréal-UNESCO Prize for Women in Science has honored five scientists of “exceptional backgrounds” from five regions of the world for their “pioneering work” in the life and environmental sciences, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization announced Thursday. organisation.

The award, awarded €100,000 to each winner, went to Maria Guadalupe Guzmán Tirado (Infectious Diseases), Director of the Research Center at the Pedro Curi Institute (IPK), Institute of Tropical Medicine in Havana, to Catalin Carrico (Biochemistry), Associate Professor at the Faculty of Perelman Medicine, University of Pennsylvania in the US and Senior Vice President of BioNTech RNA Pharmaceuticals, and Hailan Hu (Neurosciences), Professor and Executive Director of the Center for Neuroscience, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, China.

UNESCO and L’Oréal Foundation also honored Agnès Binagwaho (Public Health), Vice-Chancellor of Global Health Equity in Kigali (Rwanda) and Maria Angela Nieto Toledano (Embryology), at the Institute of Neurosciences (CSIC-UMH), Saint John of Alicante, Spain.

“The increasing place of women in science is an equality issue but also a contribution to humanity, as evidenced by the winners of the L’Oréal-UNESCO Prize for Women in Science. Their model encourages girls and women everywhere to embrace scientific careers,” UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay said in a statement.

The five winners were selected by an independent jury chaired by Professor Brigitte Kieffer (2014 L’Oréal-UNESCO Prize Winner), for the L’Oréal-UNESCO International Prize for Women in Science in the Science category. environment.

In order to make them more visible, to recognize their talents and inspire calls for future generations, the L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Program aims to accelerate the journey of women scientists and combat the obstacles they face.

According to the latest UNESCO scientific report published last June, if the number of women leading scientific careers tends to increase, this development remains very slow: just over 33% of researchers in the world are women. And only 4% of the Nobel Science Prizes are awarded to women, it should be remembered.

These disparities are more pronounced in technologies or artificial intelligence where only 22% of professionals are women.

Since the establishment of the For Women in Science program in 1998, 122 winners and more than 3,800 talented young scientists, doctoral and postdocs in more than 115 countries have been supported and honored.

LR / MAP