One of the Sustainable Development Goals set by the UN for 2030 is to achieve Gender Equality worldwide. In this context, in 2015, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted a resolution proclaiming February 11 as the International Day of Women and Adolescents in Science. As a result, the goal is to understand the role and importance of women in science, and to provide more opportunities for women in the field of scientific research.
There are numerous women who have contributed to science both in our country and globally, and who have made and will continue to make their contribution. However, in this article, we will examine some of the female scientists who have become famous in the long term thanks to their studies and findings:
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Meral Beksaç, the inventor of the first stem cells of cord blood for human use and the first cord blood transfusion in our country, also created the first and only International Accredited Cord Blood Bank. Currently, she played a pioneering role in our country regarding the importance of residual disease measurement in therapy, and received the Most Successful Basic Science Research Award at the Lymphoma & Myeloma Congress in New York in 2017 for her work in this field.
The Turkish researcher, who held the position of Director of the Department of Microbial Disease Epidemiology at Yale University between 2002 and 2010, continues to work together with his colleagues at Yale University to understand the biology of tsetse flies, which carry African trypanosomes and host multiple symbiotic microbes.
As a result of 10 years of research, the team led by Prof. Dr. Serap Aksoy has identified the gene of the tsetse fly, which is the carrier of the deadly sleeping sickness, particularly in Africa. This advance has been significant in the battle against the tsetse fly, which causes sleep in humans and nagana disease in animals in Africa.