Cristina Uriarte, Minister of Education and President of Ikerbasque, presided over the event organized on May 6th, to give talks to three women involved in research in the Basque Country. The researchers were honored by María Isabel Arriortua, Aitziber Lopez-Cortajarena and Maia García Vegniory. The event was attended by Fernando Cossío, Scientific Director of Ikerbasque and representatives of universities, research centers and technology centers in the Basque Country.

 

In the first edition of Ikerbasque's recognition of women researchers, she recognized three women in different stages of their scientific careers: a scientific career, leadership in a research field, and a remarkable contribution by a young female researcher.

 

The total recognition of his research career was for María Isabel Arriortu (1950). She has been a Professor of Crystallography and Mineralogy at the UPV / EHU since 1992, when she was the first female lecturer to be trained, as well as one of the first women to obtain a professorship at the UPV / EHU. He founded the IMaCris / MaKrisI research team and has pioneered research into multifunctional systems that can be applied in the field of environment and energy. In 2010, he received the Basque Research Award in the Science and Technology category, and in 2012 he was nominated as a full member of the Basque Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters (Jakiunde).

 

Aitziber López-Cortajarena (1974) was recognized for his leadership in the field of protein engineering. After completing his PhD in Biochemistry at YVU, he spent seven years at Yale University in the United States on tasks related to protein design, structure and function. In 2011, he decided to return to Europe and set up a research team at the IMDEA-Nanoscience in Madrid to design proteins for the creation of biofunctional nanostructures. In 2016, he joined Ikerbasque Research Professor at the CIC biomaGUNE to lead the Biomolecular Nanotechnology team, which has received significant research support from the ERC-Consolidator Grant.

 

Finally, Maia Garcia Vergniory (1978) was recognized for her outstanding contribution to the field of topological materials. He has a PhD in Condensed Matter Physics from the UPV / EHU. He then worked at the Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics and spent a postdoctoral stay at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the United States. He is currently working as an Ikerbasque Researcher attached to the DIPC. In 2017 he received the L’Oreal-Unesco for Women in Science award and in 2018 he was a member of the QUO 2018 science team.