Every year, the Fondation L'Oréal and UNESCO celebrate the scientific excellence of five eminent women scientists, each from a major region of the world. In 2021, the L'Oreal-UNESCO For Women in Science International Awards honors Laureates in the field of Physical Sciences, Mathematics and Computer Science. See here.
LAUREATE FOR LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEANS
Professor Alicia DICKENSTEIN – Mathematics Professor of Mathematics at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Awarded for her outstanding contributions at the forefront of mathematical innovation by leveraging algebraic geometry in the field of molecular biology. Her research enables scientists to understand the precise structures and behavior of cells and molecules, even at a microscopic scale. Operating at the frontier between pure and applied mathematics, she has forged important links to physics and chemistry, and enabled biologists to gain an in-depth structural understanding of biochemical reactions and enzymatic networks.
Alicia has been vice-president of IMU in 2015-2018 and remains a CWM ambassador.
LAUREATE FOR NORTH AMRICA
Professor Shafi GOLDWASSER – Computer Science
Director of the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing, professor in electrical engineering and computer sciences at University of California Berkeley, RSA professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, United States of America and professor of computer science and applied mathematics at Weizmann Institute, Israel.
Awarded for her pioneering and fundamental work in computer science and cryptography, essential for secure communication over the internet as well as for shared computation on private data. Her research has a significant impact on our understanding of large classes of problems for which computers cannot efficiently find approximate solutions.
Shafi has been invited speaker at ICM Kyoto 1990 in the section Mathematical aspects of computer science and plenary speaker at ICM Beijing 2002.
Other awardees are
Françoise COMBES, Astrophysics, France
Catherine NGILA, Chemistry, South Africa
Kyoko NOZAKI, Chemistry, Japan.