Today, the ALLEA Presidency has released a statement in support of Ukraine, its citizens and academics. The statement is a response to the ongoing military incursion by Russia into the country. ALLEA expresses its deep concern for the safety of our academic colleagues.
“Because I was a girl, I was not expected to do science. I was expected to learn cookery and needlework”, says Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, the woman who discovered radio pulsars and changed the way we look at the universe. She is one of the two interviewees that we brought together on today’s International Day on Women and Girls in Science.
ALLEA has joined the movement ‘Stick to Science’ calling for open and barrier-free collaboration among Europe’s research and innovation (R&I) actors. The initiative is a response to the delayed progress in the EU research association agreements with Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
ALLEA has joined the European Commission’s core group working on reforming research assessment. The group will support the drafting of an agreement led by the European University Association, Science Europe and the European Commission on key issues and timelines for implementing changes.
Reducing health inequalities is very much a matter of “swimming against the current”, says Professor Johan Mackenbach, Chair of the scientific committee of the ALLEA-FEAM report Health Inequalities Research: New Methods, Better Insights? “When societies become more unequal, as they do in many European countries, it is very hard to stop the health consequences of these inequalities from widening”, he explains in this interview for the ALLEA Digital Salon.
The registration for the symposium ‘Transforming Science: Pathways Towards Sustainability and Trustworthiness’ is now open. The event will take place in Brussels and online on 11-12 May 2022. Scientists, policymakers and professionals from across Europe will join to discuss current trends pressing science in light of the transformations occurred during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The public nomination period for the 2023 Breakthrough Prizes in Fundamental Physics, Life Sciences and Mathematics is now open. Nominations can be submitted online today through April 1, 2022. While self-nominations are prohibited, anyone may nominate another person. The nomination forms and rules are available at breakthroughprize.org.
The low level of Covid-19 vaccination in the Global South is ethically unacceptable and risks prolonging the pandemic. The patent waiver will not solve these vaccination bottlenecks in the short-term. Instead, additional measures should be adopted to accelerate local manufacturing and distribution of vaccines in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), ramp up investment in vaccination campaigns, and facilitate the compulsory licensing of patents and transfer of know-how.
We need more basic sciences to achieve Agenda 2030 and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals. This is the message sent to the world by the United Nations General Assembly on 2 December 2021: Member States approved by consensus the resolution 76/A/L.12 promulgating the year 2022 as the International Year of Basic Sciences for Sustainable Development (IYBSSD 2022).
