Celebrating Ada Lovelace Day with Lester W Strock award winner Heidi Goenaga-Infante
Ada Lovelace Day (13 Oct) is an international celebration of the achievements of women in science, technology, engineering and maths. It aims to increase the profile of women in STEM and create role models who will encourage more girls into STEM careers.
Founded in 2009 by Suw Charman-Anderson, it is now held every year on the second Tuesday of October. It usually features the flagship Ada Lovelace Day Live! ‘science cabaret’ in London, UK, at which women in STEM give short talks about their work or research in an informal, theatre-like setting.
This year, Ada Lovelace Day is going back to its roots with a day of blogging, Twittering and Facebooking, just like in 2009. #ALD20 will celebrate women, advocates and educators in STEM. They will be profiling women working in STEM around the world and those women who work so hard campaigning for gender equality in industry, academia and the community.
We are taking this opportunity to recognise the achievements of one of our own colleagues, Heidi Goenaga-Infante, who has been appointed the new Chair of the JAAS Editorial Board!
Of her new role, Heidi said, "I am delighted and feel honoured to be the new chair of JAAS. I am definitely looking forward to working more closely with a fantastic team of RSC editors and colleagues from the JAAS Editorial and Advisory boards."
She added, "Taking up the role of JAAS Chair is a great opportunity to ensure that the journal further builds on its long-standing tradition of publishing innovative research at the forefront of atomic spectrometry."
Heidi describes what she is aiming to achieve in this role, what she imagines will be the next big breakthrough in this field and how we can encourage the next generation of analytical chemists in an interview on the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) blog here.
The Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry, published by the RSC, is the central journal for publishing innovative research on fundamentals, instrumentation and methods in the determination, speciation and isotopic analysis of (trace) elements within all fields of application.
Last month, Heidi also won the Lester W. Strock Award, given by the New England Section of the Society of Applied Spectroscopy in recognition of a selected publication of substantive research in/or application of analytical atomic spectrochemistry in the fields of earth science, life sciences, or stellar and cosmic sciences.
Heidi accepted the award this morning at SciX conference, and gave a plenary talk on the role of reference methods and reference materials to support use of regulated nanomaterials in the manufacturing industry. This recognition is the result of Heidi's dedication to her work. She is the leading author of over a 110 scientific research papers and 6 book chapters, and works with international organisations like EURAMET, CCQM and others.
Congratulations and well done to Heidi! Read more about Heidi's work in this blog post from earlier this year, where she talks about her motivation, role models and what she enjoys about her role.
Follow the Ada Lovelace Day events on Twitter or Facebook, or subscribe to their newsletter to be kept up to date.