What matters most is the beautiful mind of the scientist – International Day of Women and Girls in Science 2025
Since 2015, February 11th has been celebrated as the International Day for Women and Girls in Science, a day dedicated to highlighting the achievements of women in STEM and inspiring future generations to follow their lead. In previous years, we’ve heard from brilliant women like our COO Vilhelmiina Juusti and Senior Application Scientist Elizabeth Cudjoe. This year, we are excited to spotlight Elinda Hermanson, our newest Application Scientist, who shares her journey in biotechnology and her thoughts on empowering women in science.
What is your specific area of STEM?
I work in the field of Life Sciences, which means I get to study life itself (if only a fraction of it at a time). My background is in molecular and cellular biology, which focuses on the building blocks of living things.
How did you end up studying natural sciences?
Structure and order are things I value, so I would say that it is my personality that has led me to the field of natural sciences. I have always liked school, and I thrived in the learning environment there. Because I am interested in understanding the biological world around me, I slowly acquired more and more information from subjects like chemistry, physics, biology and mathematics, and learned to build this information on each other. These subjects surely complement each other!
How would you explain what you do at work to someone who’s not familiar with the field?
I work as an Application Scientist in the lab, where I, together with my team, develop biosensors for screening or diagnostic purposes. Simply put, we try to find ways that would make it easier for healthcare professionals to detect diseases or make diagnoses.
What are the things you enjoy most in your work?
What I enjoy the most in my work is that it feels meaningful. This drives me to be a responsible scientist, so I can contribute to research findings that will add to the knowledge we have about health and disease.
How about the most challenging things?
The most challenging thing about science is probably that experiments won’t always go as expected. In an ideal world, experiments would follow the desired hypothesis, and the outcomes would be consistent too. However, when exploring the unknown, it is more complicated than that. There is a lot to be taken into consideration when examining scientific questions. With that in mind, scientists who welcome challenges will be the ones to succeed.
Any messages to young people, and especially girls who are interested in life sciences?
To anyone interested in Life Sciences - Welcome onboard! This field surely has a lot to offer. What’s nice about science is its objectivity. Results become facts when they can be repeated over and over again, from person to person. The experiments aren’t affected by the gender of the scientist performing them. Instead, what matters most is the beautiful mind of the scientist.
Thank you for sharing your story, Elinda!
In the last decade, women have started to close the gender gap in science and engineering in Europe. However, women worldwide still receive smaller research grants, tend to have shorter academic careers, and are underrepresented in high-profile research journals. So, as the need for specialists in STEM -related fields increases, it is important to keep encouraging and inspiring young people to become the scientists, engineers, chemists, technicians, analysts, and mathematicians of the future.
Read more about the UN Day for Women and Girls in Science on the UN website.
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