Elsevier at #AAASmtg: live updates with award-winning women in science

5 researchers from developing countries are preparing to accept the 2019 OWSD-Elsevier Foundation Award for their work in the physical sciences

Uduak Okomo, PhD, is one of five winners of the 2019 OWSD-Elsevier Foundation Award for Early-Career Women Scientists in the Developing World. She is a Clinical Research Fellow for the Medical Research Council Unit The Gambia at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Washington, DC — Their work is inspired by what they have witnessed and experienced in their countries. Through the disciplines of environmental microbiology, ethnobotany, clinical pediatrics and epidemiology, these researchers have found ingenious ways to improve the lives and livelihoods of people in their communities and beyond.

They are early-career researchers from Bangladesh, Bolivia, the Gambia, Nepal and the Palestinian Territories, and they’re being recognized for their outstanding work in the biological sciences.

On Saturday, they will receive OWSD-Elsevier Foundation Awards for Early-Career Women Scientists in the Developing World at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Annual Meeting.

Each winner will be called to the stage to explain her research and the inspiration behind it. Now, they are rehearsing their presentations with coaching from their colleagues in the Elsevier Foundation and the Organization for Women in Science for the Developing World (OWSD).

“These scientists are performing groundbreaking international-level science, often in circumstances where the deck has been stacked against them,“ said OWSD President Prof. Jennifer Thomson. “They deserve to be honored and celebrated for their dedication not only to their research but to creating a better world for people to live in.”

• Read the full article on Elsevier Connect: “Elsevier at #AAASmtg: live updates with award-winning women in science”, Alison Bert and Domiziana Francescon, 13 February,  2019