Weizmann Institute Program to Advance Women in Science

Eleven young women scientists, who completed their Ph.D. studies with honors at various academic institutions throughout Israel, will each receive an award of between $15 – 25,000 a year, for two years. The award ceremony will take place on September 14, 2009, in the Schmidt Lecture Hall at the Weizmann Institute of Science. These awards, which have been granted within the framework of the Weizmann Institute’s National Postdoctoral Award Program for Advancing Women in Science, is intended to help young women conduct postdoctoral studies at leading universities abroad, assisting them in pursuing a career in the sciences: natural (physics, chemistry and the life sciences) or exact (mathematics and computer science). The goal of the program is to begin closing the gap between the numbers of male and female scientists in the highest ranks of academia.

Recipients of the awards are selected by a special Feinberg Graduate School committee, headed by the Weizmann Institute President’s Adviser for Advancing Women in Science, Prof. Adi Kimchi.

Five of this year’s recipients completed their doctoral studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, three at the Weizmann Institute of Science, two at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, and one at Tel Aviv University.

The program, now in its third year, is aimed at helping young women scientists to overcome the main bottleneck in their professional advancement – conducting postdoctoral studies abroad. The award provides various incentives – economic, as well as social and professional – and helps to alleviate the pressure on women, especially those who are married with young children, by financing their studies abroad for two years.
 

The ultimate goal of the award is to encourage women who are interested in pursuing a scientific career in Israel, with the intention of producing a future cadre of women leaders within Israeli research establishments.

The program is supported by the Clore Israel Foundation; the Feder Family Philanthropic Fund; the Pearl Welinsky Merlo Foundation; the Charles H. Revson Foundation; the Mike Rosenbloom Foundation; the Rueff-Wormser Postdoctoral Award; the Rowland and Sylvia Schaefer Foundation; the Fredda Weiss Foundation; Janine Gordon, New York, NY; Arlyn Imberman, New York, NY; Meryl Jaffe and Adam Hurwich, New York, NY; and Karen Siem, London.

The Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, is one of the world's top-ranking multidisciplinary research institutions. Noted for its wide-ranging exploration of the natural and exact sciences, the Institute is home to 2,600 scientists, students, technicians and supporting staff. Institute research efforts include the search for new ways of fighting disease and hunger, examining leading questions in mathematics and computer science, probing the physics of matter and the universe, creating novel materials and developing new strategies for protecting the environment.

Weizmann Institute news releases are posted on the World Wide Web at http://wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il, and are also available at http://www.eurekalert.org