Breaking Biases and Envisioning Inclusion: A Roundtable Discussion for International Women’s Day 2022

Mary Barlow heads up a small team of project managers and facilities experts at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), covering projects as diverse as estate services, impact assessment and the development of the BioImage Archive. Prior to taking on this role Mary was the Programme Manager for the multi-million pound investment in EMBL-EBI by the UK government’s Large Facilities Capital Fund. This programme included the construction of new office space and the on-going public procurement of ICT infrastructure to support EMBL-EBI’s growing public databases. Mary’s work prior to EMB-EBI focused on ICT integration and intelligent buildings with Turner and Townsend a construction consultancy firm. She began her career working in an engineering workshop at Sellafield Nuclear plant. She transitioned to broadcast engineering projects with BBC Technology after obtaining her degree in Maths and Engineering at Nottingham University.

Kristina Djinović-Carugo received her MSc in Chemistry from the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, and her PhD in Structural Biology, from the University of Pavia, Italy in 1992. After the post-doctoral stage at the University of Pavia, she moved to EMBL in Heidelberg, Germany (1995) where she stayed first as EMBO post-doctoral fellow and then as staff scientist. In 1999 she joined Elettra-Sincrotrone Trieste, Italy, as the head of the Unit of Structural Biology and Crystallography. Since 2004 she has been the Chair of Molecular Structural Biology at the University of Vienna, and since 2009 the Head of the Department of Structural and Computation. Her main scientific interests are the molecular mechanisms underlying the architecture and assembly of the Z-discs – the boundaries between the basic contractile units of striated muscle – the sarcomeres. She combinesbiochemical, molecular biophysics and structural biology methods on reconstituted complexes and their components and combines in integrative structural modelling of Z-disc assembles.

Professor Louise Mullany is Professor of Sociolinguistics at the University of Nottingham UK. She has researched communication and gender inequality for the last 25 years and published a number of books and articles in this area with international publishing houses. She is founder and director of Linguistic Profiling for Professionals, a research centre and business unit based at the University. She has delivered research-based consultancy and training in diversity and inclusion to over 300 businesses and organisations, from SMEs through to large multinationals in public, private and third sectors. Her most recent work focuses on gender-based violence and hate crime in public spaces. She was winner of a Times Higher Education Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Local Community in 2021 for her joint work on gender-based violence and hate crime. She has presented her research in a number of global locations including Argentina, Brazil, Canada, China, Hong Kong, Kenya, New Zealand, Poland, Spain and Uganda.