L’Oreal-UNESCO award winner
Our discipline, like life, demands endless patience,» said Despina Sanoudou. 30. The young scientist, whose family comes from Santorini, has a PhD from Cambridge and is a former lecturer at Harvard Medical School. She specialized in molecular biology and genetic diagnosis and counseling. Now she is a researcher at Athens Academy’s Medical and Biological Research Institute, studying heredity and the molecular basis of cardiovascular disease and muscular disease. She chose the profession, she said «because there is always something new.» Next week the accomplished scientist is due to receive one of the three 2007 Greek L’Oreal-UNESCO awards for Women in Science, founded and sponsored by L’Oreal Hellas in 1998. The international awards, which honor the contribution of women scientists, carry prize money of 100,000 dollars apiece, and there are two-year scholarships of 40,000 dollars apiece. L’Oreal Hellas has instituted three annual awards for scientific research in Greece, with prize money of 10,000 euros each. The Greek prizes will go to women under 35 with doctorates who are doing research in the life or material sciences at institutes in Greece. Sanoudou will receive her award with the other prize-winners, one from Thessaloniki and one from Crete, on November 22 at Athens University’s Costis Palamas Cultural Center (45 Academias Street) at noon
