“McGill has a rich history of achievement in science, technology, engineering and mathematics research, and on this 10th annual International Day of Women and Girls in Science, we celebrate the role models and trailblazers who have made incredible contributions to these fields,” said Dominique Bérubé, Vice-President of Research and Innovation.
The special day was created in 2015 by the United Nations General Assembly to promote equal opportunities and participation for women and girls in science and technology and recognize their critical role in fostering innovation and shaping a better future.
“From Canada’s first female professor and the founder of McGill’s Genetics Department, Dr. Carrie Derick, to the 2024 winner of the L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science International Award, Dr. Nada Jabado, generations of women at McGill have been pushing the boundaries of knowledge and closing the gender gap in STEM,” she said.
McGill boasts strong female leadership in science. Four of McGill’s seven female faculty deans are scientists: Elham Emami (Dean, Faculty of Dental Medicine and Oral Health Sciences), Lesley Fellows (Dean, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences), Valérie Orsat (Acting Dean, Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences) and Viviane Yargeau (Dean, Faculty of Engineering).
The first half of the 2024-2025 academic year has been a busy one for McGill’s female science students and researchers. Here are just a few recent highlights:
September 2024
Three students – Nami Dwyer, Allison Hutchings and Andreea-Nicole Calenciuc – are among six McGill recipients of a 2024 Schulich Leader Scholarship, the most generous student award for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) studies in Canada.
October 2024
Noémie-Manuelle Dorval Courchesne, Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering, earns Prix du Québec honours by winning the Hubert-Reeves Prize, awarded to a promising young researcher.
November 2024
Audrey Moores, Professor, Department of Chemistry, becomes President of the College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists of the Royal Society of Canada.
Professors Natalya Gomez (Earth and Planetary Sciences) and Daryl Haggard (Physics) are awarded 2024 Arthur B. McDonald Fellowships from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
December 2024
Dr. Nada Jabado, professor of pediatric medicine, is named an Officer of the Order of Canada for having “revolutionized pediatric neuro-oncology with her discovery of oncohistones, linking mutations in regulatory histones to cancer.”
Rosalie Bélanger-Rioux, Faculty Lecturer, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, is one of the winners of a President’s Prize for Excellence in Teaching.
January 2025
Hui Su, a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Chemistry, is part of a McGill team honoured by Québec Science magazine for a study on harnessing the power of sunlight to transform two of the most harmful greenhouse gases into valuable chemicals. The magazine named it one of Quebec’s top 10 scientific advances of 2024.