Dr. Roberta Bondar moderating a panel discussion with National Postdoctoral Award recipients Dr. Elena Meirzadeh, Dr. Shira Weingarten-Gabbay and Dr. Naama Aviram.

On September 25, 2019, Weizmann Canada hosted over 200 members of Toronto’s philanthropic community for the Celebrating Philanthropy featuring Wonderful Women event.  

To highlight the importance of women in science, Dr. Roberta Bondar – Canada’s first female astronaut in space – gave a keynote address speaking about the challenges she faced as she pursued her dreams, and the importance of encouraging and supporting women to pursue sciences.  

This led to a lively panel discussion moderated by Dr. Bondar with panelists Dr. Naama Aviram, a postdoctoral fellow in the Marraffini Laboratory of Bacteriology at Rockefeller University; Dr. Elena Meirzadeh, a postdoctoral fellow in the department of chemistry at Columbia University; and Dr. Shira Weingarten-Gabbay, a fellow in the Sabeti Lab, part of the FAS Center for Systems Biology at Harvard University. The participants shared stories about their journeys and how the support of the Israel National Postdoctoral Award had given them opportunities they would not otherwise have had.  

The evening’s program also included highlights of new research from the Weizmann Institute and featured the Weizmann Canada Women and Science committee, highlighting their efforts to raise funds for the Israel National Postdoctoral Award Program for Advancing Women in Science.