RFS Briefings - February 18, 2020

Please see the addendum below as a brief follow-up to the last RFS Briefings sent to you on February 12th.

Please
save the date for our 2020 meeting at HHMI, November 18-19.


See below for more news about women in science

Please continue to share important news and opportunities with us so that we may share it with you, and others who are committed to supporting the careers of exceptional women in science.
 
With Regards,

Karla Signature

Karla Shepard Rubinger
Executive Director
Rosalind Franklin Society

Vera Rubin Gets a Telescope of Her Own
Vera Rubin, who died in 2016, was a young astronomer at the Carnegie Institute in Washington at a time when cosmology was controversial. Immersing herself in the investigation of spiral galaxies, she found that there was more to them than anyone realized. She and her colleague Kent Ford discovered that the universe was filled with dark matter. Though this finding was dismissed at first, the quest to identify this dark matter remains very strong for both particle physics and astronomy more than 50 years later. The National Science Foundation recently announced that the newest observatory joining this mission will be named the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, to be located at Cerro Pachon, a mountain in Chile. Jointly financed by NSF and the Department of Energy, it will be operational by 2022. Read more.

 

Jennifer Doudna Awarded 2020 Wolf Prize in Medicine
Jennifer Doudna, HHMI investigator, received the 2020 Wolf Prize in Medicine, a prestigious international prize awarded in Israel for unique contributions to humanity. She shared the prize with colleague Emmanuelle Charpentier, director of the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology, for their 2012 invention of the CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing technology. The Wolf Foundation described Dr. Doudna’s work as “’transformative technology’” in that it has “’the potential to eradicate previously incurable diseases and revolutionize the fields of genetics, molecular biology and medicine.’” Read more.

 

Sixfold Bioscience is Offering $400 (GBP/EUR equiv.) for a Successful Referral
Sixfold Bioscience, London, UK, is seeking referrals for the position of Nucleic Acid Chemist. As an RNA chemist, the recruit would have the opportunity to design and synthesize RNA that enhances Sixfold’s proprietary drug systems. Sixfold was founded to safely deliver therapeutics to diseased cells, which the company identifies as “the biggest challenge in healthcare.” Read more.

 

Neuroscientist Bruce McEwen, Who Studied the Impact of Stress on the Brain, has died
Bruce McEwen, a great supporter of the work and mission of RFS, died on January 2 at age 81. Recognized as a “giant” in the field of neuroendocrinology, he studied the impact of stress hormones such as cortisol on the brain. McEwen was also a pioneer in understanding the effect of stress on overall health, coining the term allostatic load to explain this phenomenon. He was named the Alfred E. Mirsky Professor in 1999, and was the head of the Harold and Margaret Millikin Hatch Laboratory of Neuroendocrinology at Rockefeller University. Read more.