Winners of the L'Oreal – UNESCO competition
Today in Moscow, at the Baltschug Kempinski Hotel, the awarding of the laureates of the 2008 L'OREAL–UNESCO Scholarships for young Russian women scientists will take place. Applicants for the award could be female scientists, candidates of sciences under the age of 35, working in Russian scientific institutes and universities in the following disciplines: physics, chemistry, medicine and biology. During the contest, more than 320 questionnaires were received from 65 cities of Russia.
The list of laureates of the 2008 L'Oreal – UNESCO Scholarship is as follows:
Artamonova Irena Igorevna (Moscow, N.I. Vavilov Institute of General Genetics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Senior Researcher)
Artemkina Sofya Borisovna (Novosibirsk, Institute of Inorganic Chemistry named after Nikolaeva SB RAS, Junior Researcher)
Bogomolova Evgeniya Valentinovna (St. Petersburg, V.L. Komarov Botanical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Senior Researcher)
Oksana Viktorovna Kalyuzhnaya (Irkutsk, Limnological Institute SB RAS, researcher)
Lukova Galina Viktorovna (Chernogolovka (Moscow region), Institute of Problems of Chemical Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Senior Researcher)
Makarieva Anastasia Mikhailovna (Gatchina (Leningrad Region), Department of Theoretical Physics, St. Petersburg Institute of Nuclear Physics named after B. P. Konstantinov RAS, Senior Researcher)
Merzlyak Ekaterina Markovna (Moscow, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Researcher)
Puntus Lada Nikolaevna (Moscow, Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Senior Researcher)
Ustyuzhanina Nadezhda Evgenievna (Moscow, N.D. Zelinsky Institute of Organic Chemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Researcher)
Fedorova Anna Aleksandrovna (Moscow, Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Senior Researcher).
All the questionnaires submitted to the competition were reviewed by an independent jury consisting of: Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Alexey Khokhlov (Chairman of the jury), Professor, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences Tatiana Birstein, Professor, Doctor of Biological Sciences Mikhail Gelfand, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Igor Eremenko, corresponding Member Olga Dontsova and Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Vladimir Fortov.
The award's website notes that since the creation of the scholarships in 2000, the criteria for awarding them remain unchanged: the scientific significance of the candidate, the usefulness and feasibility of his research project, as well as the prospect for the young candidate to continue his scientific career. It is also necessary for the candidate to start or continue his scientific work within his native country. In Russia, the L'Oreal Prize has been awarded since 2007.
In the comment "Polit.<url>" winner of the 2008 prize Irena Artamonova, who became one of the heroes of our publication about the program "Molecular and Cellular Biology", noted that, in her opinion, the main criterion for evaluating the competition was not so much the number of scientific articles as their citation. Her path to science began at the physics school named after. Kolmogova, then the Moscow State University mehmat, where she entered without exams, and then parallel studies at the Faculty of Physico-Chemical Biology of MIPT.
After graduating from both universities with honors, Irena continued her education first at the postgraduate school of the Mehmat, and then at the postgraduate school of the Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences, where in 2002 she defended her PhD thesis and received the degree of Candidate of Biological Sciences. Then a three-year internship at the Munich Center for Environmental and Health Research and a return to Moscow, made possible by the ICD program. Now I. Artamonova is giving a course of lectures at the MSU Biofactory and works as a senior researcher at the N.I. Vavilov Institute of General Genetics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, where she heads an independent research group.
In an interview with "Polit.I. Artamonova said that her research is now focused in the field of bioinformatics - at the intersection of mathematics and biology, and, first of all, she is "interested in evolutionary aspects, namely the stage of evolution when a person became a person. What are the evolutionary aspects of the existence of the genome specific to humans as a species? What genes appeared after the separation of humans from other primates? ...For specialists, it is also an outlet to the applied aspects of medical genetics, which my group also deals with."
She also noted that "another aspect of our activity closely correlates bioinformatics and experimental biology. A significant part of the bioinformatic merit to the experimenters is the maintenance of various databases, the storage of the acquired knowledge, access to this knowledge. For example, "protein annotation" is an electronic library of what people currently know about specific proteins. We are developing automatic annotation methods for all currently known proteins (there are about 4 million of them).
The use of databases and, in particular, protein annotations makes it possible to reduce the amount of money spent on the experiment, to narrow the search boundaries in advance. Experimenters who are faced with a new problem, a new protein for them, are no longer obliged to do old experiments today – it is easier to first turn to databases and analyze the already existing knowledge about this protein or similar proteins and the corresponding predictions."
Why didn't Irena go to work abroad? The center of attraction for her and many other colleagues is not only the ICD program, but also the bioinformatic community existing in Russia. "Without a doubt, in Russia it is arranged in a much more thoughtful way than in Germany. There, and this is to a large extent typical for the whole of Europe, bioinformatics is more focused on purely computational problems. In such a situation, everyone is engaged in their own narrow problem and there are much fewer common cases. ...From a scientific point of view, Russia is much more interesting to me. There are not so many bioinformatic groups here, but the scientific community plays an important role for existing groups. As a result, it is much more interesting and effective to do research here. And as long as we have the opportunity to exist, as long as there is some funding, we will work here."