Top women scientists to lecture at St Andrews

The University of St Andrews is to launch a national venture aimed at fostering professional links between female scientists and their male colleagues.

Dr Rona Ramsay from the Centre for Biomolecular Sciences has been awarded a grant to establish a seminar programme within the University’s Faculty of Science which will feature lectures by some of the UK’s top female scientists, the first of which will take place on Friday 29 September 2000.

The project, funded by a grant from Athena with matching funds from the University, is aimed at strengthening links between scientists in different institutions and challenging the attitudes and cultures that result in under-representation of women in the UK’s science, engineering and technology sectors.

Dr Ramsay said, “The project seeks to achieve these aims by fostering the contact between the established scientists at St Andrews and competent and successful female scientists throughout the UK, and also by raising the internal profile of the female scientists in our own Faculty of Science. Both aspects will be accomplished through a series of eight sponsored seminars and presentations by leading female scientists, coupled with informal contact between the visitor and local scientists.”

The first seminar will be held in the highly rated School of Psychology on Friday 29 September 2000 at 4pm when Dr Nilli Lavie of University College London will give the lecture “Distracted and confused? Dissociating attentional control functions through different types of load.”

The Athena Project’s aim is to increase the number of women employed in higher education as postgraduates, research staff, lecturers through to professors, and to facilitate initiatives which ensure their retention and progression in the sector.

ENDS

NOTE TO EDITORS:- For more information, please call Dr Rona Ramsay on telephone 01334 463411 or email [email protected].

Issued by Beattie Media on behalf of the University of St Andrews For more information please contact Claire Grainger on 01334 462530, 07730 415 015 or email [email protected] Ref: athena/standrews/chg/21sep2000