You can be a scientist too!

Barcelona, February 17th 2023 – Aligned with the celebration of 11 February, the International Day of Women and Girls in Science 2023, our HPC expert, Erica Bianco, Ph. D, gave a talk to 2 different groups of students aged 10 and 11 years old at the Escola Bufalà, in Badalona. 

The talks focused on highlighting the role of women working in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math), analyzing their successes and difficulties along the way. In academia only 53% of women study science in high school in Spain, a figure that drops to 40% of women who continue their professional careers as postdoctoral researchers. 

What comes to mind when you think about a woman working in STEM? Not all scientists, including women, wear a lab coat. Some of them do, but not all. Think about Jane Goodall: her science activity is and was in the field, no lab involved. Also, did you know that some well-known actresses also have STEM studies and have or had STEM careers? As Mayim Bialik, who plays Amy Farrah Fowler in The Big Bang Theory, has a PhD in Neuroscience.

Scientists can be also one of us, like the speaker, Erica Blanco, who was inspired by a visit to the Genoa aquarium to study Marine Biology. She studied in Italy and accomplished a PhD and held a postdoc position before she started working as an HPC expert for HPCNow!, a company that provides its customers with solutions and technologies for dealing with the most complex problems in High Performance Computing (HPC), contributing to the development of science and engineering. 

“Do you like science? You can be a scientist too”, underlines Erica, encouraging all students to choose this option if they like it. 

This inspiring conference finished with a quote by Charles Darwin: “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change”, which applies to STEM as well.

More information: 

– PPT presentation available here

– Announcement on 11 February website 

*Download the press release in pdf here