Women in graphene

 By James Dacey in Manchester

Today is the third day of Graphene Week, a conference at the University of Manchester devoted to the fundamental science and applications of 2D materials. While many of the talks require a PhD in materials science to even understand the title (I for one am struggling), one session taking place this evening has the refreshingly simple title: Women in Graphene. Intrigued, I caught up with the session organizer Katarina Boustedt from Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden.

Graphene Week is an annual event organized by the Graphene Flagship, the EU’s biggest ever research initiative with a budget of €1 billion. As promoting equality is a key part of the Flagship’s mission, Boustedt has launched this initiative to support women working in 2D materials research. Tonight’s two-hour session is designed to start the conversation and find out the types of support that women researchers would like.

“The session is open to everyone including men,” says Boustedt. “In fact, one of the keys to the success of this initiative is to get men to endorse these women’s groups.”

Among the ideas already on the table is mentor schemes, where senior researchers can support women early in their research careers, along the lines of programmes already offered by the Athena Scientific Women’s Academic Network (Athena SWAN).

Another idea is to provide an advice service to help women with career progression. Boustedt wants to tackle some of the existing barriers to career progression such as the way in which some institutions treat maternity leave.

“The programme is also likely to involve social get-togethers at conferences and on social-media sites,” says Boustedt.“We cannot afford to neglect half of the world’s brains.”

If you are at the conference, tonight’s session runs 5:30 – 7:30 on the 2nd floor of University Place.