2024 OWSD Early Career fellows gather for orientation workshop in Trieste

April 11, 2025

15 women scientists from the Global South spent a week building their scientific leadership skills in Trieste.

From 1-4 April 2025, the 15 women scientists awarded 2024 OWSD Early Career fellowships gathered at the OWSD Secretariat, on the campus of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy, for their fellowship orientation workshop. The fellows arrived from 13 countries in the developing world, and are about to embark on research projects ranging from using AI to find vulnerabilities in health and energy infrastructures in Tanzania, to helping preserve critical oak forests in Guatemala's mountain ranges, to developing antivenom to combat different kinds of snakebite in Nepal.

The workshop combined practical sessions designed to help the fellows manage their $50,000 research grants, including sessions on UNESCO procurement procedures and monitoring and evaluation of project outcomes, with sessions aimed to broaden fellows' perspectives beyond the lab to thinking about other aspects of scientific leadership, from commercializing discoveries, to communicating science, to science diplomacy.

The fellows were able to visit the PATLIB Centre at Trieste's AREA Science Park, where they received a presentation and a Q&A session on intellectual property by Viviana Opinato. They also had the opportunity to tour labs and conduct research visits at AREA and other institutes of their choice within the Trieste science system, including the Laboratory of Data Engineering (LADE), Laboratory of Genomics and Epigenomics (LAGE), Life Sciences Open Lab, and Innovative Materials Open Lab at AREA, as well as the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB), the University of Trieste, and the Astronomical Observatory of Trieste.

Erin Johnson and Giulia Signori of the OWSD Secretariat coached fellows in presentation skills, emphasizing the importance of the 'elevator pitch' and following the format of the recent Short Talks, Big Impacts competition focusing on brief, 3-minute research presentations. The fellows had the chance to put this training into action at a visit to the United World College Adriatic, where they each spoke briefly about their research to UWC students and had the chance to engage in one-on-one discussion with the students, some of whom came from their own countries.

Peter McGrath of IAP, the InterAcademy Partnership, and Payal Patel and Sara Dalafi of TWAS, the World Academy of Sciences also provided fellows with an overview of other opportunities at IAP and TWAS, including the Science Diplomacy programme and TWAS research grants.

Three alumnae of the Early Career fellowship also participated in the workshop as facilitators, providing their invaluable insights and guidance to the new fellows: Natalia Montellano Duran (2019 EC fellow from Bolivia), Lily Paemka (2020 EC Fellow from Ghana), and Prativa Pandey (2019 EC Fellow from Nepal). The alumnae were able to demonstrate the many ways in which the fellowship can create new career opportunities, and offer firsthand practical advice to the fellows about navigating their projects and next steps.

Throughout the week, fellows also had the chance to network with one another and to enjoy a group dinner in the city center of Trieste. Many expressed that meeting other early career women scientists in their position was one of the most important aspects of the workshop.

"It's so much more than I thought before. It has made me more powerful, it has given me more confidence to actually be more intentional and find ways to utilize this opportunity to make it sustainable, to help me to get another opportunity," said Helena Henry Maziku, a 2024 fellow from Tanzania.