Nuria Oliver receives the "Women to Follow" Award in Technology
Dr. Nuria Oliver, Chief Scientific Advisor at the newly created ELLIS Unit of Alicante, has received the “Women to Follow” award in the Technology category.
The “Women to Follow” awards have been recognizing since 2013 exceptional women in the fields of science, communication, culture, sports, business and technology. Of the thirty candidates of this edition,selected for their trajectory, their projection of the future and their social commitment, the jury has finally chosen a winner by section.
In Science, the winner has been Ana Caño-Delgado, from the Agrigenomic Research Center of Barcelona. The team leading the CRAG has managed to develop genetically modified plants to withstand extreme drought, one of the main problems of modern agriculture worldwide. They have also recently launched a line of research to produce COVID-19 antiviral compounds from cell cultures in plants.
The winner in Communication has been Ana Requena, one of the benchmarks of journalism with a gender perspective in our country. In 2012 she was part of the founding team of Eldiario.es, where since September 2018 she is editor-in-chief of gender, a pioneering position in Spain and which has the mission of applying this perspective to the whole newspaper. In 2014 she launched the blog Micromachismos, from which she has contributed to the public debate about the daily machismo that women continue to suffer, and in 2018 she was one of the drivers of the ‘Journalists Stop’ movement,
In Culture, the jury has selected Belén Funes, one of the new names that currently sound the most in Spanish cinema. After winning a multitude of awards with her shorts, last year she made her film debut in The Daughter of a Thief,who won the Goya for Best Novel Direction, as well as three Gaudí Awards.
The winner in Sport, chess player Sabrina Vega, made headlines last year by refusing to participate in the World Chess Championship held in Saudi Arabia to denounce the situation of women in that country. But, in addition, Vega is one of the best in the history of this discipline in our country, six-time champion of Spain and runner-up in Europe.
The one chosen in the section of Economy / Company has been Teresa Fernández Valdés, partner and founder of Bamboo Productions, one of the most important television fiction creators in Spain, responsible for hits such as The Cable Girls, Velvet or Fariña.
The winner in Technology, Nuria Oliver, has spent the last six months dedicated to the fight against COVID-19 as commissioner to the President of the Valencian Government on Artificial Intelligence and Data Science in the fight against COVID-19. From this position, she leads the altruistic and voluntary work of 20+ researchers who study mobility, try to predict the behavior of the pandemic and analyze the impact of the measures taken. In May of 2020, she co-founded Ellis Alicante, a non-for-profit foundation devoted to AI research. ELLIS Alicante is connected to thirty other ELLIS units in fourteen European countries and Israel.
In addition, two special prizes have been awarded this year. Firstly, the MAS Community Award, awarded by the Community of Madrid to recognize a collective working for the progress of women in some professional field, has been for this occasion for the association for gender equality in Classical and Modern culture. Created in 2009 in Madrid by a group of professionals in literature, journalism, music, theater, film, etc., it carries out studies, events, forums and an active work of denouncing inequality in cultural awards and competitions.
Finally, the new MAS Innovation Award has been for Carme Artigas, Secretary of State for Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence.
Under the circumstances, the award ceremony will be virtual this year. The ‘premier’ of the program, a very special event in which all the winners will participate, will be broadcasted online for Spain and Latin America, at 7pm Spanish time, on Tuesday, October 27. Mr. McCann has created the image of this edition of the MAS Awards.