Celebrating this year’s Faculty award winners and women in science
Rosemary Wedderburn Brown Prize
Established in 2010, this award is aimed at full-time faculty members in the health professional Schools of the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences (Communication Sciences and Disorders, Nursing, Physical and Occupational Therapy), in order to recognize individuals with outstanding scholarly potential and demonstrated research excellence in the early stages of their career.
The 2021 Rosemary Wedderburn Brown Prize is awarded to Dr. Noémie Auclair Ouellet, Assistant Professor, School of Communication Sciences and Disorders
Dr. Noémie Auclair-Ouellet’s research focuses on underserved populations including people with chronic aphasia, people with neurodegenerative disorders, and adolescents and young adults with communication disorders. She joined the School of Communication Sciences and Disorders as an Assistant Professor in the fall of 2017. She completed a clinical Master’s degree in Speech-Language Pathology at Université Laval (Québec) and doctoral degrees from Université de Neuchâtel (Language Sciences and Communication) and Université Laval (Experimental Medicine). Subsequently, she went on to earn a post-doctoral fellowship from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research at the Hotchkiss Brain Institute, University of Calgary.
Paving the road ahead for women in science
UIS data demonstrates that in 2021, women still account for less than 30% of the world’s researchers[1]. It is a well-known fact that certain fields like STEM remain male-dominated although this trend is changing thanks to various initiatives, including some of those led by this year’s laureates.
For Dr. Auclair-Ouellet, now is a time filled with opportunities for change: “It’s a very exciting time to be in research, to see all of those people who come from diverse backgrounds joining forces, bringing their points of view and their perspectives. I think it’s extremely rich and we’ll all be stronger for it.” As Dr. Brown-Johnson reflected on her award, she shared her view of how the values it celebrates are crucial to the pursuit of excellence: “…equity, diversity and inclusion must be embraced as a new direction for the best practices in sciences and medicine if we are truly to achieve our full potential as a society, as a whole.’’
