Russian ‘For Women in Science’ program is part of the global L’OREAL – UNESCO ‘For Women in Science’ project celebrating female researchers. Women scientists aged up to 35 years old who are holders of PhD and DSc degrees and work at Russian research centers and universities in the fields of physics, chemistry, medicine, and biology can apply for a prestigious national fellowship. Winners are selected based on set criteria that include candidates’ scientific accomplishments, the significance and practical value of research they conduct, as well as their willingness to continue their scientific career in Russia.

Among the 2018 fellowship awardees are Elena Anashkina, research associate at the Institute of Applied Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Nizhny Novgorod, Yulia Kalugina from Tomsk State University, Elena Panfilova, research associate at the Institute of Biochemistry and Physiology of Plants and Microorganisms of Russian Academy of Sciences in Saratov, Anastasia Penkova from St. Petersburg State University, and Ekaterina Skorb, professor at ITMO University’s Biochemistry Cluster. The full awardee list can be found here.

Over the course of her extensive scientific career, Ekaterina Skorb has worked on numerous research projects in four different countries. Having graduated from Belarusian State University, she continued her research at the Max Planck Institute, where she was in charge of a research group designing smart biomaterials. She then went over to Harvard, where she worked on several fundamental projects, including the famed Origins of life, as part of a research group led by Prof. George M. Whitesides, the most cited chemist in the world. Ekaterina Skorb’s current place of work is ITMO University, where she heads her own research group at ITMO’s Biochemistry cluster, which was created a year and a half ago and conducts cutting-edge research on creating dynamic materials for optics, designing biochips for illness diagnosis, and developing data storage solutions using chemical systems. You can find out more about Ekaterina’s innovative work and fascinating career in this interview she gave to ITMO.NEWS.

In its eleven years of existence, the Russian ‘For Women in Science’ program awarded 105 promising female scientists with 500,000 rub worth of fellowships marking their significant scientific accomplishments.