illuminating science

In great news, Jenny recieved the “Student Encouragement Award” from the Smart Women - Smart State awards on Monday. This is basically an “honourable mention” award, which was presented to a student from any of the secondary student, undergraduate student or postgraduate student categories that did not win an award in their category, but showed outstanding achievement or potential. She was just one of a very impressive line up of candidates, and you can check out all the winners here, complete with photos and descriptions of their achievements. Jen’s outline was:

A physics student completing her PhD, Jennifer Riesz is working to determine the fundamental structure of melanin, so that its role in melanoma and other related melanin diseases can be understood. Melanin is a biological pigment found in the skin, hair and eyes of many species, including humans. Ironically, although melanin is designed to protect us from the sun’s harmful UV radiation, it is also involved in the formation of melanoma skin cancer. The study of melanin requires great innovation since most traditional methods have already been applied with little success. Jenny has made significant progress and has published papers on a number of her findings including a technique that allowed her to make the first accurate measurement of the radiative quantum yield of melanin, which is an essential quantity for understanding the way that melanin safely releases energy.

I attended the ceremony (which has got to be one of the best award ceremonies I’ve been to, see below). I particularly liked the way the MC (a news reader from a local TV station) very carefully pronounced “radiate quantum yield” (see the description above), then paused a moment for the audience to respond. (For the record, the quantum yield tells you what fraction of light absorbed by melanin is then re-emitted as light, as opposed to being converted into heat or used for some other purpose. For melanin it’s very low, meaning that most of the energy absorbed (e.g., harmful UV rays!) is safely dissipated as heat, rather than being re-emitted to harm cells.

The ceremony was at Parliament House in Brisbane, and began by lots of (free) drinks (Australian wine, bubbly and beer!) and nibblies, brought around by very friendly waiters & waitresses. Finally, they brought everyone inside and the Minister for Women (among other porfolios) gave a short speech about how far women have come, but also how far they have to go, particularly in science and engineering (only 1 in 6 or so engineers are female). She spoke really rather well, and seemed like a very friendly, very “Aussie” woman - I would have liked to have met her personally actually. Then, without further ado, they announced the winners, and read the little blurbs about their work. There are some seriously impressive people in Queensland! Check out their descriptions for all the details.

Then, the ceremony was over, and the winners went off for lots of photos (and I have to say Jen’s came out really well while the rest of the audience got back to celebrating - i.e., enjoying the drinks. I won’t tell you how many glasses of champagne I had… The actual ceremony was over in about 15 minutes or so, I’d estimate, and it really was about the winners and their work, a refreshing change from some of the pompous ceremonies where it’s more about the institution rather than the recipients (University graduation ceremonies come to mind!

My only negative point of the evening was that the Minister, when talking about how much women have achieved, also pointed out that women now hold 55% of all bachelor degrees in Australia. Although this is great for women, that means that men only hold 45% of degrees. If we’re aiming for equality, then this isn’t a good thing! I’m not sure whether the statistic meant “new” degrees (e.g., per year) or whether it really was of all degrees in existence, but particularly if it’s the latter, that’s a very bad thing given the once male excess. In vet science at least, women now make up about 90% of the students. Do we need to start focussing less on women, and more on boys and how they cope with school? Some women I’ve spoken to have (half-?)jokingly said that it’s about time that women came out ahead, but clearly that’s a ridiculous attitude.

It’s also somewhat disappointing that there are no “Compassionate Men” awards or anything like that for men who take up traditionally female dominated jobs - teaching and nursing are just two examples. Nor are there scholarships for men to study those courses, and I seem to remember there was a protest recently against suggestions to introduce some. Not that any of this in any way detracts from the importance or significance of the Smart Women awards!

Anyway, congratulations Jenny - you deserve it!