Dr Germaine Djuidje Kenmoe, an Associate Professor at the University of Yaoundé, Cameroon, has won the prestigious OWSD-Elsevier Foundation Awards for Early-Career Women Scientists in the Developing World. The international award for research promotes socio-economic development and a better quality of life.
The Cameroonian Professor together with a Guyanese woman, Dr Dawn Iona Fox, also a winner, were presented with the cash prize of US $5,000 and all-expenses paid attendance to the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), which took place in Austin, Texas from February 15-19.
Throwing more light on the award, Ylann Schemm, Director of the Elsevier Foundation, explained: “visibility and role models are critical for early career women scientists, and even more so in developing countries where women often face compounding societal pressures. This year, we have awarded our 7th group of winners and I can vouch for the impact this has on their careers: opening doors to new research assignments, greater mobility and enhanced international collaboration opportunities.”
Kenmoe and Fox are two of five women scientists from the developing world to have received the high-profile award which aims to recognize the scientific and career achievements of women from developing countries in five regions: Latin America and the Caribbean, the Arab region, Sub-Saharan Africa, Central and South Asia, and East and South-East Asia and the Pacific.
Nominations for the 2018 awards opened in June 2017 and were accepted from early-career women who had received their PhDs within the past 10 years and were working in the physical sciences. The women had to also live in one of the 66 scientifically lagging countries identified by The World Academy of Sciences.
