About us and our aims

We are a community of women scientist of all stages and ages from the BI, Meilahti and Viikki campus who hope to raise awareness of women in science and promotenetworking opportunities.

On this blog we hope to share events and ideas with everyone who is interested and form a platform for mutual engagement. Everyone, man or woman, interested in the topic please join the community.

Johanna Englund, PhD                          

Katajisto Lab, Institute of Biotechnology
University of Helsinki

Fumi Suomi, PhD

McWillams Lab
RPU for Molecular Neurology
Faculty of Medicine, University of Helsinki

Blanca Fernández López, PhD

Department of Anatomy
Neuroscience Center
Helsinki, Finland

Svetlana Sharifulina, PhD

Huttunen Lab, Neuroscience Center, HiLife,
University of Helsinki

 

 

 

Former members

Kira Holmström, PhD

Senior Scientist/Orion Corporation

Viikki Lifescience Network for Women Scientists are awarded for the Maikki Friberg award!

The Maikki Friberg Award is granted annually for notable work towards the promotion of equality at the University of Helsinki. This year, we were awarded for our activities during 2017 and the proposal for the events in 2018!

The prize of 3000 euros was awarded on May 25th at 12 on the Minerva Square (Siltavuorenpenger 5 A) at Work related Wellbeing afternoon -event.

Congratulations for Viikki Lifescience Network for Women Scientists!

The usage of the award will be presented in the networking event in Meilahti next week.

 

 

Does gender matter?

Ben A. Barres, widely recognised neuroscientist who advocated for gender equality in science, describes gender bias in science.

In this article in Nature published in 2006, he explains scientifically how the myth in “gender difference in availability” DOES NOT exist, but how gender bias blocks women in proceeding in their career in science. He tells some of his own experiences of bias as a transgendered person in scientific career, which unfortunately is evidently representing what can happen to all women in science. He states the importance of taking action, not to stay silent and educate younger generations. Now in 2018, does gender still matter?

-Fumi Suomi

This article is recommended by Blanca Fernández.

Meilahti networking event

Dear Colleague,

We would like to invite you to our first networking event in Meilahti campus, organised by Viikki Women’s Lifescience Network.

This event aims to bring together female researchers from different stages of their careers within life science field in Meilahti campus. We will introduce you the activities we have been organising in Viikki last year and we would like to use this occasion to discuss and develop together the network. The meeting is open to everybody (men and women) and all ideas and suggestions are welcome! 

Date: 13th of June, Wednesday

Time: 14:00-15:00

Place: Biomedicum I, Meeting room1, P-floor

 

Please, fill in the registration form by Monday June 11th for the convenience for coffee preparation.

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/womens-lifescience-network-tickets-45899614984

https://blogs.helsinki.fi/wmn-network/

Blanca Fernández

Svetlana Sharifulina

Fumi Suomi

On behalf of the Viikki Women’s Lifescience Network

WMN Networking event 5th April with working life expert guest speaker

Happy international women’s day!

Dear all,

We would like to wish you all a happy international women’s day! And thank you for your engagement in the network. New exciting networking opportunities to follow shortly, we will keep you posted.

Best wishes,
Kira and Johanna

End of the year for Viikki Women’s Life Science Network

We would like to thank you for your involvement in the network. We hope that you have enjoyed the activities and have gotten something useful out of it. We aim to continue to develop this initiative so all feedback and suggestions are welcome.
 
To thank you all and to celebrate the first year of operation, we would like to invite you to the last networking session this year on Wednesday 13th of December at 2pm in the BI lounge. We will celebrate it with some traditional Finnish glögi. Feel free to bring along any colleagues who do not know us yet. Please let us know by Tuesday 12th if you think you’ll make it for catering purposes.
 
Hope to see as many of you as possible there!
 
With best wishes,
Kira and Johanna
 
On behalf of the Viikki Women’s Life Science Network

Professor Lea Sistonen’s Lecture on Viikki Monday Seminar Series

We have a guest speaker, Professor Lea Sistonen from Åbo Academi University on January 8th Monday for the Viikki Monday seminar series.

On the same day, we are organising an networking coffee time where you can have a rather more casual occasion to talk with Professor Lea Sistonen.

Viikki Biocenter Monday seminar on  January 8th at 15:15-16:00, Biocenter 2, Auditorium 1041

Speaker:          Lea Sistonen

 Title:                 Transcriptional memory and re-programming of gene expression in cell stress
         
Host:                Uwe Richter
 
Prof. Sistonen leads a laboratory at the Faculty of Science and Engineering and Centre of Biotechnology at Åbo Akademi University. After her post-doctoral studies in Rick Morimoto’s group at Northwestern University, she established herself as a world leader in the field of stress response regulation. Her work has been key for understanding how heat shock transcription factors (HSFs) transactivate heat shock protein networks to preserve cellular homeostasis. Her current research interest is to decipher the major HSF-related regulatory mechanisms under different stress conditions, including increased temperature, oxidative stress, and cancer. For this purpose, Prof. Sistonen’s group applies state-of-the-art methods to the analysis of transcriptional machineries in dynamic chromatin contexts.