Cape Town - The Schlumberger Foundation Faculty for the Future aims to create a community of woman leaders in science, technology, engineering and mathematics in Africa and around the world.
The foundation held one of its regional forums attended by young scientists and technicians from around Africa at the V&A Waterfront on Wednesday.
Keynote speaker, executive chairman at Independent Media Dr Iqbal Survé, addressed more than 40 alumni and fellows at the forum and spoke about the collaboration between the scientific community and the media.
He said this had led to worldwide recognition of, arguably, one of the greatest archaeological breakthroughs of South Africa – the recently discovered relative of humankind, Homo Naledi.
“This (the coverage of the Homo Naledi) is a great example of where something would have been, maybe, an article on page 7 in the science and technology section, became the front page… what was amazing about this was the response from the communities and, in particular, from the schools.
“The schools were asking for more and more copies of the newspapers to be able to teach it in their classrooms,” he said.
The Schlumberger programme was launched 12 years ago and has hosted 13 previous meetings in the UK, the US, France and the Arab Emirates. The meetings are hosted once or twice a year in close association with prominent universities where Schlumberger grantees are based.
The ultimate goal of the organisation is to create a community of woman leaders in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, who will support the socio-economic development of their home countries through strengthening the faculties by teaching and conducting research.
The programme identifies women around the world in countries where the gender gap is the widest and gives them a chance to study science in one of the top universities.
The foundation has more than 600 women placed in countries around the world, who help develop each other’s ideas and research in their chosen fields of science.
* Find out more about the Schlumberger Foundation Faculty for the Future here.
Cape Argus