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Date Time EMBL prepares women postdocs for leadership Members of EMBL’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committee explain how EMBL is choosing to challenge through its LEAP mentoring programme By Roshni Mooneeram: LEAP Programme Manager, EMBL Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Officer & Eileen Furlong: EMBL Equality, Diversty and Inclusion Officer, Group Leader, Head of Genome Biology Unit, Member of EMBL Directorate “I felt quorum sensing, like bacteria do, and I felt I am not alone in this journey as a woman in academia.” -LEAP programme participant The theme of International Women’s Day this year is #ChooseToChallenge. In that spirit, EMBL’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Committee has captured the experiences of the 23 pioneering postdocs who were selected for the first Leadership and Excellence for Aspiring Postdocs (LEAP) programme at EMBL. LEAP is part of EMBL’s larger EDI strategy and commitment to advancing the leadership role of women in science by redressing the ‘leaky pipeline’ to senior roles. LEAP is an innovative mentoring and coaching programme with action learning designed to enable women postdocs to challenge themselves and their environment as they strive for their next career step as a group leader, principal investigator, or assistant professor in their field. LEAP is generously funded by the Friends of EMBL, and kindly supported by EMBL’s alumni who are acting as external mentors, all of whom are group leaders or professors in universities or other institutes.
Date Time Coding between vines EMBL Teen reinforces the value of allyship in STEM as she develops app to identify grapevine diseases A member of the EMBL Teen community, Maria-Theresa Licka, has created a news-making app that helps winemakers identify early stages of disease on their vines. Credit: Ivo Licka A member of the EMBL Teen community has made identifying leaf diseases on grapevines as easy as taking a picture with a smartphone, and it’s why she’s making news. Now Maria-Theresa Licka’s work with teen collaborator Mario Schweikert has them looking forward to March, when they’ll present their app at the Bosch Center for Artificial Intelligence virtual AI Conference 2021. The two of them won the jury prize in Germany’s national artificial intelligence competition for pupils last November, which was an improvement over the previous year when they did not qualify for the final round.