NARILIS supporting “Women and Girls in Science” @UNamur

The International Day of Women and Girls in Science (WiS) takes place every 11th of February, following the declaration by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 22nd of December 2015. This annual event aims at promoting the access of women and girls to science and technology as well as their full and fair participation.

On the 9th of February 2023, one hundred fifty people gathered at UNamur to celebrate women researchers in STEM. This 3rd edition of the UNamur's WiS conference was made possible thanks to a fantastic committee of young researchers committed to this cause: Coraline Stasser, Manel Barkallah, Hala Kasmo, Charlotte Bouquiaux, Lorena Ballesteros Ferraz and Sébastien Mouchet. The program of this interdisciplinary day included 2 keynote lectures and 6 talks featuring the brilliant research carried out by women scientists (wgis.unamur.be). In addition, more than 40 early-career researchers were given the opportunity to present their work through flash talks and posters.

NARILIS is particularly proud of the involvement of its researchers in this event.

NARILIS PhD student Hala Kasmo was not only highly involved in the organization of the event, but she also performed successfully as a chairwoman at WiS!

Hala Kasmo obtained her bachelor's degree in Biotechnology Engineering in Syria and she came to Belgium in 2019 to start a Master's in Molecular Microbiology at the UNamur. As a master student, she did a 4-month internship at Marburg Phillips-Universität where she joined the group of Prof. Martin Thanbichler and worked on cyst developments of the plant growth-promoting bacterium Azospirillum brasilense. In 2021, Hala was awarded a FRIA doctoral grant and joined the team of Prof. Jean-Yves Matroule at the Research Unit in Biology of Microorganisms (URBM). Her PhD thesis aims at investigating the bidirectional copper transport across the inner membrane of the free-living Caulobacter crescentus.

NARILIS postdoc Katy Poncin was one of the six invited speakers at WiS!

Katy Poncin completed a PhD thesis in 2018 under the direction of Prof. Xavier De Bolle (UNamur, URBM), entitled “Study of cell cycle regulators and DNA repair following alkylating stress in Brucella abortus”. In 2019, she joined Prof. Christoph Tang’s group at the University of Oxford as a postdoctoral researcher to work on the human-specific bacterial pathogen Neisseria gonorrhoeae, the bacterium responsible for the sexually transmissible disease gonorrhea. On the occasion of the WiS celebration, Katy Poncin talked about her serendipitous discovery of Neisseria's suicide processes. Read conference abstract. Since June 2022, Katy returned to Belgium and joined Xavier De Bolle’s team for a second postdoc. Her research aims at studying Polymyxin B resistance in naturally resistant Brucella abortus and Sphingobium yanoikuyae.

Many other NARILIS researchers were also part of this day with flash talks and/or posters: Asena Aynaci, Inès Bouriez, Adriana Diaz Anaya, Nora El Khalfaoui, Alison Forrester, Fabio Giovannercole, Laurelenn Hennaux, Valentin Job, Blinera Juniku, Hala Kasmo, Amira Khochtali, Chloé Matthys, Margaux Mignolet, Marine Ote, Lucas Schoenauen, Pauline Tricquet and Audrey Verhaeghe.

And finally, congratulations to NARILIS PhD student Audrey Verhaeghe who won the second poster prize with her poster presentation entitled “Identification of the O-chain ligase in Brucella abortus”!