14 October 2020
Bilbao Campus
Laura María Lechuga Gómez and Susana Ladra González have been awarded with the 2020 Ada Byron Prizes for Women Technologists (senior and junior categories, respectively), organised by the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Deusto.
Laura María Lechuga Gómez has a degree in Chemical Sciences and is currently a research professor at the CSIC of Barcelona. She works for the Center for Biomedical Research in Network in Bioengineering, Biomaterials and Nanomedicine (CIBER-BBN) of the Carlos III Health Institute. She is also a Professor in the Department of Physics and Technology at the University of the Arctic (Norway) and a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the State University of Campinas (Brazil). During the coronavirus crisis, she has been an expert advisor to the Ministry of Science and Innovation and the Government of Spain in the Multidisciplinary Working Group (GTM). She is also the author of 8 families of patents at national and international level (seven of them have been transferred to the industry), as well as founder of two spin-offs. She has participated in more than 55 research projects, mostly international, and is the author of more than 200 publications. In 2016 she was awarded the Physics, Innovation and Technology Award (Royal Spanish Physics Society - BBVA Foundation) for her "excellent track record" in the field of nanophotonic bio-sensors, including applications for the early diagnosis of diseases such as cancer or malaria.
Susana Ladra González is a Computer Science Engineer and PhD. She is Professor of Computer Languages and Systems (University of A Coruña) and coordinator of the STEMbach programmme at the University of A Coruña (UDC). She is Director of the Campus Innova of the UDC and Vice-President of the Professional College of Computer Engineering of Galicia. She is also part of the working group of the ICT City in A Coruña (ICT innovation ecosystem project) and founding member (and vice president) of the Galician node of the Association of Women Researchers and Technologists (AMIT-gal), dedicated to scientific dissemination. She collaborates in scientific dissemination projects with Scientific Museums of Coruña, in addition to starring in numerous scientific dissemination actions and visibility of women in engineering.
The Ada Byron Award is sponsored by Microsoft, as well as the Provincial Council of Bizkaia, IK4 and Emakunde-Basque Women's Institute. It counts with the collaboration of Innobasque and Basque HealthCluster. As of this year, the award has two categories: senior (endowed with 3,000 euros) and junior, under 35, (endowed with 1,000 euros).
Up to today, the Prize has been awarded to 6 technologist women: Concepción Alicia Monje Micharet (researcher in Robotics and Professor in the University Carlos III in Madrid); Montserrat Meya (expert in artificial intelligence and automatic translation); Asunción Gómez (researcher in semantic technologies); Nuria Oliver (expert in modelling and recognition of human behaviour with computers); Regina Llopis (PhD in Mathematics Applied to Artificial Intelligence by the University of California Berkeley), and María Ángeles Martín Prats (lecturer at the Electronics Engineering Department of the University of Seville.
The awards ceremony will be held on 29 of October at the ForoTech 2020.
For more information about the award, please consult this page.
