Women in STEM shattering gender stereotypes
Creating gender equity and providing leadership opportunities for women scientists and researchers has been central to the vision at UPES School of Health Sciences and Technology.
The year 2020 was exemplary for women laureates in STEM. Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their revolutionary research on CRISPR and Andrea Ghez shared the crown with Reinhard Genzel in Physics for discovering the supermassive black hole. Despite under-representation, under-valuation, gender bias and professional inequity, women researchers have come a long way in the last century. However, the task of addressing these challenges is mammoth and calls for a dedicated effort from the society as a whole. UPES, as a progressive institution of higher learning, is defiantly committed to offer equal opportunities to its women scientists, researchers and students and harness their potential as future leaders in science and technology. School of Health Sciences and Technology (SoHST) at UPES has a cohort of exceptionally proficient and talented women as faculty. About 50 to 60 per cent of students pursuing STEM and higher studies at SoHST are women. Individual excellence and coordinated team brilliance shines through under five unique verticals. First, the Food, Nutrition and Dietetics Department, focusing on areas investigating interactions between diet, health and diseases, is helmed by Dr. Shuchi Upadhyay and Dr. Divya Rawat. Second, the Department of Pharmacology has Dr. Jyoti Upadhyay with expertise in the area of Clinical Pharmacy and Pharmacovigilance. Other faculty members have considerable research experience in the area of Pharmaceutics, Novel Drug Delivery and Targeting Systems, Nanotherapeutics, Pharmokinetics, Pharmacognosy and Process Engineering. Third, the areas of Structural Bioinformatics, computer-aided Drug Design and Medicinal Chemistry are being led by academicians with global exposure and experience. Ms. Monika is a medicinal chemist in this team, working on QSAR-inspired designing and synthesis of novel medicinal compounds against dermal cancers. Fourth, the Department of Microbiology, has Dr. Smriti Arora, expert in the area of Host-Pathogen Interactions, Ribosome Biology, and Genomics. Other bright minds in the team are devising strategies and investigating candidates for development of future therapeutics against enteric pathogens, understanding the molecular basis for insulin resistance, respiratory and ageassociated ocular diseases in humans. And finally, research in the stream of Biotechnology has Dr. Nishu Goyal as an expert in the areas of metabolic network modeling and optimization of cellular network and Systems Biology. Dr. Vanika Gupta and Dr. Snigdha Mishra, with expertise in reproductive ailments and immune-response, are working on establishing widelyemployed invertebrate models Drosophila melanogaster and Caenorhabditis elegans, in addition to the existing ‘animal house’ facility that would expedite therapeutics assessment and help explore human disease targets. Additionally, Zebrafish facility would also be introduced to study complex neurological disorders such as autism. Together, these five verticals establish SoHST as a unique trans-disciplinary school with women in key leadership positions.