Anna Ferré Mateu, researcher at the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the UB (ICCUB-IEEC), and Katharina Heil, scientific project manager of European research projects at the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, are two out of the hundred researchers worldwide that have been chosen for the Homeward Bound project, a leadership initiative for women training on STEM. The program will close with a three-week trip to the Antarctica by ship.
The twelve-month long program includes conferences, personal development and leadership tools, coaching sessions as well as visibility and training sessions, and the chance to work on significant collaborations in forums and teams dedicated to areas of interest.
This is the sixth edition of Homeward Bound, a program created in Australia in 2016 which aims to unfold a collaboration network with a thousand women training on STEM and provide them with the chance of taking leadership roles at a global scale and contribute to a sustainable world.
Anna Ferré Mateu majored in the study of the cosmic evolution of different types of galaxies. Since 2018, she holds a postdoctoral fellowship Junior Leader in ICCUB, where she is part of the research area on Structures and Evolution of the Galaxy.
Katharina Heil is a bioinformatics scientist and scientific poject manager of European research projects at the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science. She conducted her joint doctoral program at the University of Edinburgh (Scotland) and the Royal Institute of Technology of Stockholm (KTH, Sweden). She is currently the president of the Erasmus Mundus Association.