International Day of Women and Girls in Science
Today, the 11th of February, is the International Day of Women and Girls in Science. By being a network of researchers, we decided, within the RS2E, to highlight some of our female researchers.
They live in Paris, Bordeaux, and Caen, and all four of them share this passion for research and electrochemical energy storage:
- Doctor Antonella Iadecola (AI)
- Doctor Christel Laberty-Robert (CLR)
- Dr. Valérie Pralong (VP)
- Dr. Laurence Croguennec (LC)
In order to learn more about them, their backgrounds, and the place of women in the research world, we asked them a few questions.
- What is your research topic and specialty?
AI: I study the mechanisms of operation and degradation in electrochemical energy storage systems using synchrotron radiation characterization techniques.
CLR: My work focuses on the synthesis of hybrid materials to design efficient batteries and fuel cells, in particular, the synthesis of new electrolytes with self-healing properties.
VP: My research topic is focused on the synthesis and characterization of new ionic conducting materials. My specialty is the synthesis of materials.
LC: I am a Solid State Chemist and Crystallochemist in the field of materials developed for batteries and electrochemical energy storage (M-ion (M = Li, Na, K) and all-solid batteries).
- Why did you choose to be a scientist?
AI: Since childhood, curiosity drove me to seek answers to my questions, which were varied and numerous. However, this is my high school math teacher, who taught me to cultivate creativity and consistency that sparked the real love for science. Therefore, I chose to study physics to try to answer all my questions! Thanks to my master's supervisor, I "landed" at ESRF in July 2018 for a manipulation and felt like I was home. The synchrotron quickly became my ideal habitat.
CLR: It was my encounter with Professor Francis Dabosi, who was working in the field of aeronautical metallurgy at the University of Toulouse, that pushed me to choose Materials Science and to do a thesis. It was then the collaboration with Professor Alexandra Navrostky, at Princeton University, that definitely convinced me to pursue an academic career. She showed me that regardless of social background and personal difficulties, passion for science and hard work lead to success. It was the American academic research’s culture that made a deep impression on me.
VP: As far as I can remember, I always wanted to be a chemist. As a child, I used to have fun concocting potions and other things from anything I could find: household products, bathroom products, garden products... My main concern was the lack of access to an oven. At 10 years old, I decided to become a chemist. I had heard about the CNRS and joining it became a goal for me.
LC: Since I was very young I love science, which I first discovered through mathematics, then later through chemistry and physics. I wanted to have a job related to science very early on. I was very lucky to meet teachers who were passionate about science in high school and, at other key moments in my life, teachers and researchers who gave me confidence in my ability to become a scientist and later a researcher at the CNRS.
- Why did you choose this field?
AI: I found myself among chemists by chance. I come from experimental physics and I was a post-doc at Elettra, the Italian synchrotron, on the X-ray absorption spectroscopy line. It was the meeting with Lorenzo Stievano, who was coming to study Sulphur batteries, that made me discover a new world. I was intrigued by what was going on inside the battery and we started working together, that was in 2012.
CLR: Twenty years ago, I chose to go into the fuel cell field after a thesis in catalysis. I had the intuition that the field of renewable energy would become a central concern.
VP: Energy storage is one of the major issues, the need for materials was obvious, and working on an applied subject were the main reasons for this choice. In addition, I had the chance to listen to Jean-Marie Tarascon's classes as soon as he arrived in the United States. He knows how to transmit his passion and it is thanks to this meeting that I work in this field.
LC: It is the result of a succession of encounters with passionate and exciting researchers, which made me first want to discover this field of research as part of my thesis, and then to pursue my research as a CNRS researcher in this field. I wanted to do fundamental research in a field with an applied purpose. I had heard a lot about the Materials Institute of Nantes. Therefore, I contacted its Director, Jean Rouxel, and explained my motivations to him, and this is how I started my thesis with two passionate researchers, Raymond Brec and Philippe Deniard. I was lucky enough to be able to continue my research in this field by joining the Institute of Condensed Matter Chemistry of Bordeaux as a CNRS researcher, and more specifically the Solid State Ionics research group, a privileged scientific environment, directed by another passionate researcher, Claude Delmas. After 25 years, this field of research remains rich in terms of challenges, both in the discovery of new materials and in the understanding of original mechanisms for the development of new battery technologies.
- What do you want to achieve professionally?
AI: My dream is to develop a time-resolved multi-scale approach that would allow to have all the chemo-physical information from surface to volume during a single manipulation.
CLR: To make a concrete contribution to solving one of the most important issues in human history! This is a very recent field in which there are still many discoveries to be made.
VP: To offer material with a real impact to my peers.
LC: I am fortunate to evolve in a rapidly changing field of research with constantly renewed challenges. For me, it is now a question of developing new synthesis processes and sustainable materials, optimizing the synthesis, shaping and properties of these materials for new generations and technologies of batteries, and recycling these materials. It is also a question for me of participating in the development of new tools for characterizing materials or mechanisms involved in batteries. This would allow to better prevent their aging and optimize their operation, based on the major innovations achieved in recent years in terms of temporal and spatial resolution in diffraction, microscopy and spectroscopy.
Beyond the strictly scientific accomplishment of my research, I love training through research. I like to see young PhD students evolve during their thesis, to see them gradually become autonomous by becoming a force of proposals, and then to integrate into the world of R&D or research.
- What is a woman's place in the research world and more specifically in the field of battery?
AI: Women who choose to continue doing research should be encouraged and supported. Unfortunately, there are still very few of them, especially at high levels and in strategic positions. In general, the problem arises after the thesis, because the precariousness and the competition demand total involvement. However, where there are obstacles, there are also opportunities. One must follow the 3C's rule: Creativity, Constancy, and Courage.
CLR: Despite the successes of Marie Curie and Irène Joliot Curie, it is clear that today women still do not occupy the leading roles in French research. However, several of the female students I have supervised in recent years give me hope that things are changing. In addition to their competence, they are now more confident and society is more inclined to recognize them as scientists, which will perhaps allow them to break the "glass ceiling".
VP: I think that research requires a great deal of openness and curiosity beyond the gender of the researcher. I think that the research world needs all types of talents, natures, characters and that accepting the differences of each other is necessary in the research world more than anywhere else. I met on my way some male researchers who would have preferred to see me making the coffee and not to take too much place in terms of research contract. However, this is also the game of competition and the only way for some people to gain value.
LC: I always have a little difficulty answering this type of question because I personally do not wish to be seen as a woman in the world of research, but as a researcher, and I therefore hope to be objective in saying that in my field of research or in my work environment, women can have the same place as their male colleagues, at least if they wish to. Sometimes, our greater sensitivity (on average) to the success of the group rather than to the success of the individual and to the quality of life within this group is still too often perceived as a weakness, whereas in my opinion it is, on the contrary, a strength.