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Marileen Dogterom (Delft/BN) receives Suffrage Science award

[07-03-2017]

(By: TNW / TU Delft)
On International Women’s Day, prof. dr. Marileen Dogterom received a Suffrage Science Award at the Royal Society in London. The award, one of twelve in total, comes with special suffrage heirloom jewellery, which will be handed over during an evening celebrating the achievements of leading women scientists.

Dogterom will be granted this award for her work as a leading female scientist in the field of Bionanoscience.Patricia Basserau, Group Leader ‘Membranes and Cellular Functions’ at the Institut Curie in France, nominated her to be the next recipient of her Suffrage Science award for women in engineering and physical sciences. Over the years, Marileen has developed many creative and rigorous physical approaches for understanding how cytoskeleton filaments exert forces in cells”, Basserau notes. “She is a model that demonstrates that it is possible to be at the same time an excellent and world-recognized scientist and a fair, nice person.”

The Suffrage Science scheme celebrates women in science for their scientific achievement and for their ability to inspire others. It encourages women to enter scientific subjects, and to stay. This public engagement scheme was initiated in 2011, by the MRC Clinical Sciences Centre (CSC), a biomedical research institute of the UK’s Medical Research Council. It was launched by the Director of the institute, Amanda Fisher, and by science broadcaster Vivienne Parry.

The awards themselves are pieces of jewellery designed by students of the art and design college Central Saint Martins-UAL, long-standing science-arts collaborators with the London Institute of Medical Sciences. After two years, each of the 12 winning women in each group hand on their jewellery to a recipient of their choice, at an awards ceremony. This scientific “relay” creates an ever-expanding cohort of talented women with a connection, encouraging all to reach senior leadership roles.