The Women in Renewable Energy (WiRE) initiative, meant to give visibility to female scientists working in this research field and to promote their participation in international conferences, is discussed in an article published in MRS Bulletin. ICN2 group leader Dr Mónica Lira-Cantú is one of the initiators of WiRE.
An article in the bulletin of the Materials Research Society (MRS Bulletin) talks about the experience of the Women in Renewable Energy (WiRE) conference and network, launched in 2019 by Dr Zakya Kafafi, Distinguished Research Fellow at Lehigh University (Pennsylvania, US), and Dr Mónica Lira-Cantú, CSIC Research Scientist and leader of the ICN2 Nanostructured Materials for Photovoltaic Energy Group. This initiative aims to raise awareness about gender biases in the scientific environment and, more importantly, to promote a stronger presence of female scientists at conferences and in the workplace.
Two workshops organised by WiRE were held in 2019 in San Diego and in 2020 in Barcelona, respectively. Women scientists and engineers from around the world gathered to report on their research in renewable energy and to discuss about the role of women in science, obstacles and challenges they must face, and tools to make academia a more inclusive environment. The recordings of all the presentations and the roundtable are available on the ICN2 Youtube channel (WiRE Workshop playlist).
In the MRS Bulletin, some of the opinions expressed by members of the WiRE network are reported. Among them are Prof. Sossina Haile (Northwestern University, US), Dr Debra Rolison (Naval Research Laboratory, US), Prof. Pooi-See Lee (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore), Prof. Jenny Nelson (Imperial College London, UK) and Prof. Anita Ho-Baillie (University of Sydney, Australia).
The 3rd edition of the Women in Renewable Energy (WiRE 2022) conference will be a satellite event of the European Materials Research Society meeting and will be held on June 2, 2022.