Winners of fellowships of L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women In Science Egypt Program 2019 announced

13 / 11 / 2019

By Dina Mohamed - - - | Edited by Marwa Nassar

L’Oréal Egypt announced the names of three Egyptian women researchers who won the 2nd edition of the L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women In Science Egypt Program 2019.

The three winners are Nada Abdel Aziz and Maha Mohamed Hamimi, post-PhD researchers at Cairo University; as well as Sarah Halawa, a PhD researcher at the American University in Cairo (AUC).

The three were honored during a ceremony held on Tuesday in the presence of Investment and International Cooperation Minister Sahar Nasr, L’Oréal Egypt Country Manager Benoit Julia and President of Academy of Scientific Research and Technology Mahmoud Saqr.

L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Egypt fellowships program aims to promote the participation of young women in science coming from Egypt. This program identifies and rewards talented young female scientists in the field of Life Sciences (such as biology, biochemistry, biophysics, genetics, physiology, neurosciences, biotechnologies, ecology and ethology) as well as Physical Sciences (such as physics, chemistry, petroleum engineering, mathematics, engineering sciences, information sciences, Earth and Universe sciences).

The program honors three talented young Egyptian women researchers for the quality of their research works and encourages them to pursue a brilliant career in science.

Egyptian Minister Sahar Nasr said promoting education and scientific research is a top priority for the Egyptian government, noting that 2019 is the year of education.

She lauded L’Oréal Egypt for supporting Egyptian women researchers.

Meanwhile, L’Oréal Egypt Country Manager Benoit Julia said the company allocates about dlrs 4 million for supporting female researchers under the Women in Science Program, noting that about 3400 researchers have won the program’s fellowship.

Julia said this underlines the company’s belief in the importance of empowering women in the scientific research sector and realizing gender equality in line with the Sustainable Development Goals.

For his part, Representative for the UNESCO regional office in Cairo Beshr Imam said the program aims to encourage more women to join the march of scientific research.

The program offers a 10,000-euro fellowship for post-PhD researches and a 6,000-euro fellowship for PhD researches with an aim to encourage women to develop their researches, he said.