International Women's Day 2021
The theme is for International Women's Day 2021 is "Choose to Challenge: We can choose to challenge and call out gender bias and inequity. We can choose to seek out and celebrate women's achievements". This is exactly what we have done! We have sought out the achievements of the women in our Department, some of which have let us know about their work directly and some of which have been mentioned by other colleagues. The 10 examples shown below are only the tip of the iceberg, and I hope that seeing this will inspire you to get in touch about the amazing achievements of women in our Department. Remember, women are much less likely to self-promote so I need everyone's help with this!
In addition to these examples, please scroll right to the bottom for free events that are open to staff both externally and internal to Warwick. I hope you enjoy this page, it was really fun to make and made me realise how diverse and impressive the achievements of our Chemistry Women are.
Happy International Women's Day 2021,
Ann Dixon, Chair of the Athena SWAN SAT Team and the Wellbeing and Diversity Committee
Congratulations to Zoë on her new Collection!
#AcademicMentalHealth advocate Dr Zoe Ayres recently teamed up with Science on a Postcard (an independent science-communication business) to make mental health awareness products for scientists. £1 from the sale of each product will be donated to Dragonfly Mental Health, who are committed to cultivating excellent academic mental health.
Young Chemist wins award in House of Commons
Fabienne Bachtiger, a Computational Chemistry Postgraduate, won a silver award for her poster at a STEM poster competition in the House of Commons; she wins a £1250 prize and a medal. Congratulations Fabienne!.
Dr. Diana Palacio Lozano sets a world record
Dr. Diana Palacio Lozano is the Department's winner of the 2020 Faculty Post-Doctoral Research Prize for her paper 'Pushing the analytical limits: new insights into complex mixtures using mass spectra segments of constant ultrahigh resolving power’ published late last year in Chemical Science. This paper reported a world record for the number of components that could be identified in a crude petroleum sample – nearly a quarter of a million! – using mass spectrometry. For full details, click here.
RSC Energy Sector recognises promising chemist
Dr. Jessica Pereira has been awarded a PhD thesis prize: it is the Royal Society of Chemistry Energy Sector PhD Award for 2019.
Jessica’s thesis was entitled 'Nanostructured Copper Window & Reflective Electrodes for Organic Photovoltaics’, and the RSC prize for her thesis comes with an award of £500. See the full article on Jessica's award here.
National award for project to bring chemistry to life in schools
Dr Nicola Rogers from the Department of Chemistry has been presented with the 2020 Inspiration and Industry Award from the Royal Society of Chemistry. The project she developed, entitled ChemBAM, links subjects from the national curriculum to online experiment toolkits to help students use chemistry to understand topics such as water treatment, cancer prevention, DNA mutation or nuclear waste treatment. It helps bring chemistry to life for school children. Read more...
Julie Macpherson awarded prestigious RSC Geoffrey Barker Medal
The Geoffrey Barker medal is currently awarded on a roughly biennial basis by the Royal Society of Chemistry Electrochemistry Group to an electrochemist working in the UK or Ireland in recognition of their contributions to any field of electrochemistry. These contributions should be recognized internationally, and should strengthen the standing of UK and Irish electrochemistry. Read more.
Zeldovich Medal awarded to Dr. Katharina Brinkert
Dr Katharina Brinkert from the Department of Chemistry has been awarded the Zeldovich Medal by COSPAR, the International Committee on Space Research. The Zeldovich Medals are conferred by the Russian Academy of Sciences and COSPAR to young scientists for excellence and achievements. Hear more.
Congratulations Rhiannon on double RSC Award!
Rhiannon Brooks was featured in an article in RSC Voice Magazine for winning both a prize for her talk and the popular vote for the best poster at the RSC Analytical Biosciences Group (ABG) Early Career Researcher Meeting. The work she presented was published in 2020 in BBA Biomembranes and has just published a follow on study in Scientific Reports.
Outreach success for Christine, Elise and Ann
Christine Lockey, Elise Bennett and Ann Dixon brought Slime to the masses at Slice of Science 2020, where they (with some young helpers) showcased the Chemistry Department at a very popular event. This event formed part of Chemistry's extensive outreach programme for young people and families.
Maria Kariuki establishes Black Students Society
As well as doing fantastic research towards her PhD, postgraduate student Maria Kariuki has established Chemistry's first Black Student Society and has become a key member of the University-wide Network for Ethnic Minority Postgrads. Congratulations on making such a difference Maria!
Internal Events
WMS has several events open to all staff for International Women's Day 2021, developed by their MBChB Student Sub-group.
Monday 8th March at 6pm: Individual perspectives on how to choose to challenge for International Women’s Day. Four women from WMS give us an insight into where they have had to Choose to Challenge in their lives and careers. See 20 minute talks from Professor Kate Seers, Dr Harbinder Sandhu, Ginny Davis, and Professor Lesley Roberts by joining here.
Monday 8th March at 8pm: Free Yoga Session from Women in Medicine and YogaSoc here.
Wednesday 10th March @ 7pm: 2021 Women in Leadership: A BME Experience panel discussion. See four amazing guest speakers who are going to discuss their experiences of being BME women in leadership here.
External events
Celebrating Women in Chemistry Virtual Conference and Career Event - Monday 8 March 2021, 09:00 – 17:30
Hosted by the University of Nottingham, This online event will celebrate International Women's Day and showcase the contributions women have made to chemistry within academia, industry and digital communications. Register for free.
Suffrage Science Tenth Anniversary Awards - Monday 8th March 17.30-18.30
Join the MRC London Institute of Medical Sciences (LMS) in celebrating the fifth ‘engineering and physical sciences’ Suffrage Science awardees, nominated by their colleagues for their outstanding scientific research, communication work, and support of women in STEM. Register for free..
Multiple Awards for Bo Kelestyn
As well as winning the Warwick Award for Teaching Excellence in 2020, Bo was also was awarded the Butterworth Memorial Award for staff in the first six years of their academic teaching career. For more details see here. Congratulations Bo!