Danobatgroup will take a leading role in the presentation of the Ada Byron awards

• The group´s Director of Innovation, Nerea Aranguren, is a member of the awards jury and will attend the presentation ceremony to be held on 29 October in Bilbao
• The industrial group is one of the sponsors of the award, which is given every year by the University of Duesto to raise awareness of the contribution of women to science

The Danobatgroup business group will take a leading role in the presentation ceremony of the Ada Byron awards for Women in Technology. These are given every year by the Engineering Faculty of the University of Duesto, on this occasion one of the awards has gone to the Research Professor of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) , Laura Lechuga Gómez.

The ceremony will take place on 29 October, it will be streamed and the attendance capacity will be limited to comply with health recommendations.

The Research Director of Danobatgroup, Nerea Aranguren, who is a member of the jury, will be present at the event, which will be held on the Bilbao campus of the University and coincide with the opening session of Engineering Week, Forotech 2020.

Also attending the ceremony will be the Member for Employment, Social Inclusion and Equality of the Provincial Government of Bizkaia, Teresa Laespada, and the rector of the University of Deusto, José María Guibert.

Born in Seville in 1962, Lechuga Gómez is a chemist and, in addition to being a professor of the CSIC, directs the Biosensors and Bioanalytical Applications Group (ICN2) at the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology and works for the Biomedical Research Networking Centre on Bioengineering, Biomaterials and Nanomedicine (CIBER-BBN) of the Carlos III Health Institute.

In the current health crisis, resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic, she has been an expert adviser to the Ministry of Science and Innovation and to the Spanish government in the Multidisciplinary Work Group (GTM). The professor also coordinates one of the 17 projects selected in the call for proposals of the European Commission for advancing knowledge on the virus that causes the COVID-19 in the ICN2.

While, in the youth category, the Ada Byron award went to Susana Ladra González from Galicia. A graduate in mathematics and doctor in Computer Science, Ladra is a full professor of Languages and Information Systems (University of A Coruña) and coordinator of the STEMbach program, whose aim is to promote scientific vocations.

This year, Danobatgroup has been added to the sponsors of the awards, with the aim of strengthening its commitment to the development of professional talent, the promotion of women´s scientific and technological vocations and equal opportunities between men and women.

"Our support for this initiative has a dual purpose: on the one hand, it reflects our clear commitment to equality and to participation in projects that recognise the contribution of women in innovation and, on the other, it is part of our commitment to training of talent in collaboration with the education community" said Aranguren.

The Ada Byron awards were first given in 2014 and since then the work of outstanding scientists such as María Ángeles Martín, professor in the Department of Electronic Engineering at the University of Seville, Montserrat Meya, linguist specialising in computer language, and Regina Llopis, doctor in mathematics applied to artificial intelligence from the University of California Berkeley (USA) have been recognised.

Danobatgroup has a model for strategic talent management, which has the empowerment of its professionals as its backbone. As part of this commitment, participation in initiatives that seek to raise awareness of the contribution of women in science is of vital importance.

Furthermore, the industrial sector is facing challenges such as the digitisation and automation of production environments, a new model that will require the incorporation of multidisciplinary professionals from the STEM field (science, technology, engineering and mathematics), so contributing to the organisation of actions that promote scientific vocations and keep passion for technology and research alive are key.