L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science // Dr Philippa Karoly, Dr Jiawen Li and Dr Olivia Harrison

11.29.2021 - By Sarah Davidson Play

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Welcome to the second segment of our second miniseries for the year showcasing some incredible women in science thanks to the L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science fellowship program. While our running miniseries wasn’t sequential and could be listened to in any order, I’d recommend going back to last week’s episode for the full introduction to the program and the landscape before digging into this one.

A stat that definitely deserves another mention, however, is that only 28% of researchers today are women with less than 20% making up the most senior leadership positions, and only 3% of Scientific Nobel Prizes have been awarded to women. So, L’Oréal, a company brought to life by scientists 100 years ago, are dedicated to changing those statistics and have awarded five outstanding women in the industries broadly referred to as STEMM – science, technology, engineer mathematics and medicine – a fellowship to help them further their groundbreaking research.

One of the biggest challenges for women in these areas is a lack of exposure to career paths and role models, so L’Oréal has also created a Girls in Science program to highlight for school students how diverse, dynamic and deeply impactful pathways in science can be. And since the in person events weren’t able to go ahead, I’m so honoured that these Seize the Yay episodes will take their place and be distributed to young girls who are just starting to think about their way to yay so that a new generation of young scientists might see a future for themselves in the sciences.

Our first two guests last week absolutely bowled me over – Dr Mahdokht Shaibani is an Iranian battery engineer working on cleaner alternatives to lithium batteries and Dr Kirsty Nash is a marine biologist looking at the relationship between changing nutrient production from fisheries and coral reefs on one hand and micronutrient deficiencies in humans on the other. This week our three mini-interviews focus more on medical breakthroughs in epilepsy, neuroscience, cardiovascular health and anxiety. I hope you find Dr Philippa Karoly, Dr Jiawen Li and Dr Olivia Harrison as inspiring as I did!