Celebrating our women in science

To mark International Day of Women and Girls in Science (Friday 11 February 2022) we are shining a light on the many remarkable women who work for the Bacterial Plant Diseases Programme and our projects.

To start with, 6 out of 7 members of our Coordination Team are women, including team leader and forest pathologist Dr Sarah Green. As well as leading the BPD Programme, Sarah is responsible for managing the Forest Research Northern Research Station’s pathology laboratory, and for developing and carrying out research projects to address important tree health problems in UK forests.

Furthermore two of our projects, BAC-STOP and BRIGIT, are led by women. The BAC-STOP project lead, Dr Sandra Denman, is a Senior Research Scientist at Forest Research. An expert in Acute Oak Decline, Sandra has given specialist advise to Parliamentary Enquiries, the Science Select Committee on Forest Research, and even HRH the Prince of Wales! The BRIGIT project lead, Professor Saskia Hogenhout, is no less accomplished. Based at the John Innes Centre she is Group Leader for Plant Health specialising in interactions between plants and insects and the role of microbes in these interactions. Well respected in her field, Saskia even has a Wikipedia page!

And our project teams include around 41% women which is fairly typical for science in the UK (in 2019, 46% of the science workforce identified as female.) So, as you can see from the photo above, we have a lot of wonderful women scientists to celebrate this International Day of Women in Science.

So why is this important? UN Secretary General António Guterres has this message “Today, only one in three science and engineering researchers in the world is a woman. Structural and societal barriers prevent women and girls from entering and advancing in science. The COVID-19 pandemic has further increased gender inequalities, from school closures to a rise in violence and a greater burden of care in the home. This inequality is depriving our world of enormous untapped talent and innovation. We need women’s perspectives to make sure science and technology work for everyone.”

We couldn’t agree more!