Hildegard Uecker receives “For Women in Science” grant

Mathematician Hildegard Uecker is one of four early-stage researchers who received a “For Women in Science” 2013 grant in Vienna on Tuesday evening. The postdoc in the group of evolutionary biologist Nick Barton at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (IST Austria) was born in Würzburg (FRG) in 1982. Ueker seeks to employ the methods of theoretical evolutionary biology to find out under which circumstances a population endangered with extinction can ensure its continued survival by genetic adaption to the new environment.

The other awards, endowed with 20,000 Euro each, go to physicist Elisabeth Lausecker (University of Linz), physician Ana Soler-Cardona (Medical University of Vienna) and zoologist Angela Stöger-Horwath (University of Vienna).

Since 2007, the stipends are awarded annually by the Austrian daughter of a French cosmetics company (L’Oreal), in cooperation with the Austrian Commission for UNESCO and the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) and partly financed by the Federal Ministry for Science and Research. The award is aimed at “excellent young women with scientific ambitions”. The winners were selected by a jury of the ÖAW, according to the criteria of excellence, relevance of the project and feasibility.