Donna Milgram founded a national institute to foster female success in STEM fields. In an interview, she discusses the institute's mission to promote the potential of women in STEM and ensure they have a prominent place in science and technology. The institute aims to encourage and promote women in science, engineering, and technology through initiatives like promoting gender equality in Europe and collecting data on gender trends in STEM.

1. Donna Milgram’s desire to foster
female success in traditionally male-
dominated fields led her to found
a national institute. In an exclusive
interview, she talks openly about
the Institute’s belief in the potential
of women to enhance STEM and
its important work to ensure they
occupy a prominent place within the
science and technology landscape.
FORMING THE
COMPLETE
PICTURE
International
Innovation
showcases the
most exciting research
highlights and interviews
published in recent
editions, available
open-access online
BEAUTIFUL
SCIENCE
IMAGE
ANALYSIS
Immunofluorescence
photomicrograph of
a smear of activated
mouse B cells.
Triple-labelled
section from the dorsal
hippocampus of a rat.
3T3-L1 cells
in adipogenic
medium.
New neurones are generated in
the adult brain in an area involved
with memory processing.
With an extensive remit that aims to encourage and promote women
in science, engineering and technology, General Secretary Margarita
Artal and WiTEC Partners Esther van Schaik andValeria Szekeres
offer their views on some of the Association’s priorities, including the
promotion of gender mainstreaming in Europe and the importance of
data collection for objective analysis of gender trends in science.
EUROPEAN
ASSOCIATION
FOR WOMEN
IN SCIENCE,
ENGINEERING
AND TECHNOLOGY
In the US, men comprise about 75 per cent of all STEM students.
Why do so few women take up these subjects and what can be
done to change this situation?
Dr Serena Schwenkert (Biozendrum der LMU München)
On the one hand, appropriate role models and mentoring programmes
can help change this situation, but on the other hand it has to be
considered that women are more likely to shift their ‘work-life balance’
more in the direction of ‘life/family’ – often during the most intensive
and important years in an academic career. In my eyes, more tolerance
for individual needs, as well as more flexibility in pursuing an academic
career, would help this situation.
112 INTERNATIONAL INNOVATION

2. A TOXIC CASCADE THE GENE REGULATORS
MECHANISMS OF SPATIAL
REPRESENTATION
DECIPHERING
THE EPIGENOME
Muscle plasticity and
mitochondrial adaptation to
exercise is the topic of interest
for a group of researchers at
the Muscle Research Centre
in York University, Canada.
Mitochondrial biogenesis is
adaptable, meaning numbers
of these cellular powerhouses
can increase by 50-100 per cent,
depending on exercise.The team
has discovered that older people
are less able to adapt their levels
of mitochondria as a result of
several molecular pathways that
slow molecular development in
ageing individuals.
RNA programmable CRISPR-
Cas9 is a new genome editing
tool developed to allow faster
and more flexible genetic
engineering of bacteria, plant
and animal DNA. By utilising
RNA molecules to drive the
DNA-splitting enzyme Cas9, a
multinational team has enabled
programmable splitting of
DNA. The tool, developed by
researchers in Sweden, Germany
and the US, is offering exciting
new biotechnological and
biomedical applications.
How the brain encodes and
retrieves memories has puzzled
philosophers and neuroscientists
alike for centuries. Scientists
from McMaster University,
Canada, at the cutting-edge of
computational psychological
research, have developed a
new model of allocentric and
egocentric reference frames
used by the brain to determine
object location, dependent and
independent of human location,
which are encoded into memory
by the hippocampus.
Professor Giuseppe Macino
is Director of EPIGEN, an
ambitious project that forms
an innovative network of
Italian laboratories. Together
with Professor Giuseppe
Testa, coordinator of the
dissemination and healthcare
policy programme, and the
project’s manager, Dr Cecilia
Poli, he aims to further
understand epigenetic
mechanisms and their
contribution to various
human diseases.
Calcium plays an important role in
intracellular signalling, and when
homeostatic balance is disrupted,
neuronal function is inhibited. Scientists
at the University of Manitoba, Canada,
have been studying the effect of calcium-
transporting gateways on neurons and
neurodegenerative diseases. Novel
experiments have elucidated some key
findings; pannexin channels (which
transport calcium) are linked toTRPM2
receptors, and suppression ofTRPM7
proteins creates resistance to neuronal
death after brain ischaemia, thereby
preserving neuronal function.
CELLULAR POWERHOUSEA PEPTIDE TO TREAT
HUNTINGTON’S DISEASE
Huntington’s disease (HD) is a
genetic disorder which causes neural
stress leading to neurodegeneration.
Research at the Institut de Genomique
Fonctionnelle, France, has offered
new hope for treating HD with the
discovery of a new peptide – P42 –
which effectively blocks PolyQ-Htt
driven aggregation which leads to
neural dysfunction.
WWW.RESEARCHMEDIA.EU 113