Ureshnie Govender, a Senior Scientist at South Africa’s Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), and Angeline Kasina, an Assistant Lecturer at the Technical University of Kenya, visited Berkeley Lab last month as participants in the State Department Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affair’s TechWomen. The program is an international exchange that brings emerging women leaders in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) from Africa, Central Asia and the Middle East together with their professional counterparts in the U.S. and gives them access to networks, resources and industry contacts. This year, TechWomen brought approximately 90 women representing 19 countries to the San Francisco Bay Area.
This was Berkeley Lab’s fifth year participating in the program. Teresa Williams, Principal Scientific Engineering Associate at the Molecular Foundry and Daniela Ushizima, Staff Scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Computational Research Division (CRD), co-hosted the emerging leaders.
During their visit, Govender and Kasina got a firsthand look at the interdisciplinary and collaborative research culture at Berkeley Lab. Williams and Ushizima are currently collaborating on a project that investigates the use of block copolymers to direct the assembly of nanocrystals into mesoporous frameworks. Williams notes that these materials, or films, have a variety of energy efficiency applications, such as energy storage, use in smart windows and electrodes
