It was my sixth year teaching high school biology.  During a crazier than normal week I changed my lesson plan in order to add some new content to my unit on the evolution of birds.  I discovered a NOVA special about a team of engineers who were trying to reconstruct an extinct dinosaur thought to be an early ancestor of birds.  Based on the credibility of the program I showed a piece of it in class before watching it first.  The program content was fine, but I cringed when I realized that none of the 20 or so engineers on the team were female.  I held my breath and hoped no one would notice.

I was inspired to want to become a scientist when I was just 10 years old, and I knew from then on that I’d never be satisfied if I didn’t at least try. It all began with a school project about water, we covered many different topics from water safety to animals that live in the water. One afternoon a guy who I think worked for the national rivers authority, but it was too long ago now to remember, came to my school and talked about how they assess the health of rivers, about how you know if a river or stream is clean and if the ecosystem in it is healthy.

How often do you give thought to your heart? As long as your heart is beating properly and without pain, most of us are unconcerned with how doctors, scientists and engineers study the heart, diagnose problems, and create solutions to conditions and maladies that affect the heart.

This is the second issue of “Snapshot fellows”, where you will discover the fellows in their day-to-day work.

I’m glad to present you “Snapshot Fellows”, a new kind of article where you will discover the fellows in their day-to-day work. For the first issue, I present you Svitlana Yablonska and Irene Margiolaki.

There is a dynamic spirit of innovation and progress in China’s scientific community today. Prof. Nancy Ip (Laureate 2004) and member of the For Women in Science 2010 International Awards Jury, provides an overview of the modernization that is impacting China’s research infrastructure. Prof. Ip is Chair Professor and Head, Department of Biochemistry, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, China.