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04-Mar-2025
Instruct-ERIC is delighted to reveal that it has won the Newcomer Gender Equality Champion award from the European Commission.
At a ceremony at the European Commission headquarters in Brussels on 3 March, Instruct was announced as winner of the Newcomer Gender Equality Champion award. This award confirms Instruct’s unwavering commitment to advancing gender equality and diversity within its own internal Hub, its Centres and Facilities, and in the wider structural biology community.
In the acceptance speech, Instruct Director Prof. Harald Schwalbe said, “The application for this award has facilitated increase gender equality awareness, enthusiasm and participation far beyond the core Hub of our RI. This, in turn, has a positive impact on our research and training activities for the researchers making use of our research infrastructure, with our European facilities creating a multiplying positive effect of gender equality in structural biology research in Europe.”
The first ERIC to receive the award, Instruct has developed its Gender Equality and Diversity Plan over several years, ensuring that members of its central Hub are treated equally and fairly, with actions such enhanced maternity and paternity cover among many others.
This commitment extends to ensuring that committees and review panels are diverse, to reduce the potential for unconscious bias, and ensure all researchers are given an opportunity to progress their structural biology careers.
Instruct Head of Operations, Claudia Alén Amaro, said, "Instruct aims to provide access to infrastructure to structural biologists around Europe and the world in an open and democratic way. We endeavour to make infrastructure available across career levels, promoting the career of young scientists. In flagship activities such as the Instruct Biennial Structural Biology Conference, gender issues have always been a guiding point for the selection of speakers and organising committee. This award recognises our efforts so far and it will help us to continue improving toward our objective of a more equal environment for the new generation of structural biologists."
Instruct Head of Strategy, Natalie Haley, commented, “Achieving equality and diversity is a gigantic task. Like many scientific fields, structural biology suffers from a historic imbalance in gender representation. As a research infrastructure, Instruct is an important vehicle for democratisation and reducing barriers to structural biology research. We’re proud of what we’ve achieved so far: putting measures in place to support researchers of all genders throughout their careers and improving the working culture in the Instruct hub. This recognition from the European Commission is a great validation of our efforts and encourages us to keep pushing for greater gender equality and diversity in everything we do.”
With this award, Instruct now aims to progress further, with gender equality in science workshops and will explore other ways to advance diversity in the structural biology community.
Prof. Schwalbe said, “We look forward to continuing our efforts to promote diversity and gender equality both in our team and for the wider structural biology research community.”
The Spanish National Research Council, CSIC, also won in the Sustainable Gender Equality category. CSIC hosts the Instruct-ES facility in Madrid, CNB-CSIC.
