Next Tuesday, February 11th, the International Day of Women and Girls in Science will be commemorated and the celebration will be lived in a very special way in the laboratories of the three engineering schools of the campus, Cinbio and Ecimat. Since the researchers who work every day in these facilities are going to share with more than 250 secondary school students from different municipalities in the province of Pontevedra, their passion for science and technology. They have been organizing the activities for weeks and everything is ready to receive them and convince them that they are facing a world “very interesting and attractive, which can be very fun and, above all, absolutely essential for society to advance”, as the researchers Belén Vaz and Verónica Salgueiriños, coordinators of the scientific workshops, underline.
All the activities (workshops, conferences, talks …) are grouped into a conference named how Elas fan CienTec 2020 and all have the fundamental objective of giving visibility to the work of women in these fields, creating female roles in the field of science and engineering and promoting practices that favor gender equality. In addition, the celebrations will continue on Wednesday the 12th on the Ourense campus with the 3rd Outreach Conference on science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Experiment in feminine, 14 practical workshops in which around 300 schoolchildren will participate. And, in addition to all these activities on the Vigo and Ourense campus, throughout the month, 26 researchers and an one researcher at UVigo will go to 29 educational centers throughout Galicia to offer 41 talks and activities about their work and about the role of women in science and technology.
Scientific area: six workshops at Cinbio and activities at Ecimat
Activities in the scientific field will be concentrated at the Biomedical Research Center, Cinbio, and at the Toralla Marine Science Station, which belongs to the Center for Marine Research (CIM). In the Cinbio six workshops will be held in which issues such as the preparation of gold nanoparticles, checking of optical properties, sex chromosomes and sex-related inheritance will be addressed … “We have to try to convey to these girls that women can and should be part of this whole process, because they have a lot to contribute and a lot to say, ” the coordinators, Vaz and Salgueiriño, emphasize , who also anticipate that, as the main novelty, this year the program of activities includes a small inaugural talk which will be in charge of Amelia Verdejo, professor of Mathematics at the University of Vigo, already retired, and who has a very demanding profile with respect to awareness of equality issues. ” In previous editions, some of the participating girls complained about the fact that we had left their classmates out and others made it clear that they did not believe that this kind of activity was necessary, so we decided to include this talk as well ” the organizers explain.
In the case of the CIM, this date will be celebrated with a conference by Alba Sousa, a psychologist specialized in raising awareness and training in gender equality and violence, and with a visit to the Ecimat facilities guided by the techniques that work there, so that they have the opportunity to know the research projects that are being carried out and learn first-hand the stories and experiences of the women who carry them out. The activity is cofunded by the Xunta de Galicia and the European Union through the ERDF Operational Program Galicia 2014-2020.
Technological area: nine workshops in the three engineering schools
In the technological field, each of the campus engineering schools organized their own workshops. At the School of Telecommunications Engineering, activities will revolve around video games, the operation of the internet and Lego Mindstorm robots. “We are going to repeat the same workshops as in past editions because the evaluation we receive from the institutes is very positive,” Professor Soledad Torres explains. She is the coordinator of activities at this center, who emphasizes that the main objective is that the girls return home seeing the technology “as something useful for society, fun and within their means”.
In the School of Mining and Energy Engineering the workshops will focus on the identification of the most common minerals; in the presentation of the different materials (ceramic, metal, polymers …), including multiple curiosities regarding their use, and in a series of highly visual practical experiences aimed at learning the basic notions of combustion. In Industrial Engineering three other workshops will be held: one on infrared thermography; another on design and prototyping and, a third, on Open Lab, in which they will be able to visualize different projects of application of this technology, among them, the car designed by UVigoMotorsport.
Poster women and girl in science (PDF)
Source: DUVI