A couple of years ago my son was invited to a party by a friend from his preschool.  This party fell in a particularly inconvenient week for me.  I had a grant due, several papers on my desk that needed editing, some teaching to prepare for, and we were seeing research patients at night.

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.

During my training as a medical student with overnight shifts in the wards of a government hospital, new patients admitted with severe leptospirosis or dengue fever means that there may be another long night without sleep. Infectious diseases wards are often overcrowded and a new patient can be admitted only when a patient is discharged.

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

In this challenging world, everyone has a tendency to look for the best way of living. A considerable number of people, especially women, feel gender inequality. However others hold on the contrary opinion believing that there is no case for worrying. I concede that often gender rights are abased and I would like to present my condition as a female scientist in my country, which I will illustrate with examples based on my own experience.

In developing countries like Bangladesh, providing quality primary and secondary education for girls is essential to bringing more women into science. Hasina Akhter suggests ways that teachers, parents and governments can help correct the gender gap.

In this ode to women scientists, behavioral ecologist Venetia Briggs reminds us how much the face of science has already changed--and how much further we have to go.

As part of the L'OREAL-UNESCO For Women in Science awards week, a group of distinguished panelists gathered in Paris for a press roundtable to share their views on gender mainstreaming, on the challenges women face in pursuing research careers in the private and public sectors, and the support measures that have been-or should be-taken.