Daggiana Gómez
Hector Jara
The content of this news item has been machine translated and may contain some inaccuracies with respect to the original content published in Spanish.
Whenever Dr Layla Hirsh talks about when her passion for science was born, she goes back to her school days. Thanks to her father, who was then the police chief of the Tacna region, she had access to a computer and, upon discovering how it worked, Layla fell in love with it.
She learned to master it, so much so that when they opened the computer lab in her final years at school, she confirmed that she was good at anything to do with technology. She knew how to handle the equipment perfectly. She liked mathematics, computer science and English, all pointing in the same direction.
Beyond his knowledge, he recognises that having the strong character he inherited from his father has been the key to standing out in this world. It was always clear to him that he was not going to depend on anyone, he wanted to be a professional, have his own house and car, all the fruit of his own efforts.
"Being a Latin American woman is complicated. I have always had the character to defend myself. As my father taught me, I have always made myself heard. We women are now responsible for breaking those stereotypes," says the PUCP teacher and researcher, who has just received the L'Oréal-Unesco-Concytec-ANC Award "For Women in Science".
The first thing she did when she heard her name as the winner of the 'Talent on the Rise' category of the "For Women in Science" award was to thank her alma mater, the PUCP. She says that, without a doubt, our University has allowed her to grow professionally and to stand out in the world.
Layla studied Computer Engineering at PUCP, where she also did her Master's degree in Computer Science, and then went on to do a PhD in Bioscience and Biotechnology at the University of Padua, one of the best in Italy. At that time he was a lecturer in the Department of Engineering and was supported at all times to make his dream come true.
Science, for her, has always been an opportunity. For women, she believes, it is a way to achieve the independence we so desire, it allows us to give back to society, to be part of the change. However, from her own experience, she says it is a complicated world for women. "I am the first female senior lecturer in computer engineering. There are only 2 women out of 19 professors. But even so, in the last three years, I have been a career director and my work has been good," she says. In addition, as of January 10, Dr. Hirsh is the first female Director of Studies in the history of General Studies Science.
She acknowledges that those researchers she admired so much were men and there were no women like the one she dreamed of becoming, through biotechnology. Something that the competition she has won leaves in the past. "This prize allows young women to say 'If she could do it, why can't I?' and not go through what happened to me, which was to think 'I want to be like him, like this researcher', and not have a female point of reference," she says.
Researcher PUCP
This recognition comes with a financial award that will serve to promote the research projects she is currently working on. In this sense, for Professor Hirsh, the recognition represents a great opportunity for her thesis students and her team.
"I continue to work on the REFRACT repeat protein project. I have thesis students who have projects that are also linked to this topic, and what I want to do is to support them with the money to finish their research. To have this amount is to have the possibility of investing in their growth. In addition, the award supports me, it supports our work team, not just me," he explains.
The "For Women in Science" Prize has been awarded by L'Oréal in partnership with Unesco since 1998 to recognise the careers of five eminent women scientists from the five main regions of the world: Latin America, North America, Africa and the Arab Emirates, Europe, and Asia-Pacific. In alliance with Concytec, Prociencia and the National Academy of Sciences, it seeks to promote women's empowerment in the scientific field.
The winners are selected by an international jury of experts. To be eligible, she must be recognised for her personal scientific excellence, be actively involved in scientific research, and be involved in any field of life and environmental sciences.
In this edition, the award was divided into two categories: Category A "Scientific Excellence", aimed at women researchers with a long career; and Category B "Rising Talent", aimed at women scientists under the age of 45.
This year, two Peruvian women - out of more than 50 applicants - received this recognition: Dr Teresa Ochoa, from the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, in the category "Scientific Excellence" and Dr Layla Hirsh from PUCP in the category "Rising Talent".
In 2020, the lecturer from the Department of Engineering led an initiative that won the competition 'Special Projects: Response to Fondecyt's COVID-19'. We are talking about the project in the thematic area of telehealth and mobile health "Characterising COVID-19: COVID-19 patient data analysis tool in Peru".
For her, decision-making in this health crisis required a better understanding of the behaviour of the virus, and this was only possible through statistical studies. Her proposal was to build a national database covering various dimensions of patients hospitalised with COVID-19.
In addition to the research and contributions to science that he has been working on, with his experience, through teaching, he prepares young people and invites them to explore the world of computer science. In the last two years, he has taught undergraduate courses such as Fundamentals of Programming, while at postgraduate level, he has dedicated himself to guiding future masters in research through the courses Thesis Seminar 1 and 2.
But that's not all: the lecturer from the Computer Engineering Department specialises in bioscience and biotechnology, and collaborates with international laboratories. In 2018, the project on repeat proteins of which she is a member won funding to study their structures for four years. This latest study aims to identify proteins and classify them.
"I am a computer engineer, but the path is not straight. I went through computer science, and changed my course to bioscience and biotechnology and ended up as a bioinformatician. Proteins have structures, if you look at them in 3D, but they are also data. They have information that can be analysed from a computational point of view. In my PhD I found a method that allowed me to predict some information about repeated proteins that have completely different characteristics. This input can be used for something bigger: other research and medical applications," he explains.
We congratulate Dr Layla Hirsh for this recognition that highlights her productive scientific career, and we share her advice to girls and adolescents who want to develop in science: "I would say to young women that you can do it. I believe in equality, anyone can be whatever they want to be, regardless of gender. If you think it's your thing, there's no stopping you. Nowadays there are more opportunities, there are special scholarships for women in science, let's take advantage of that. Neither careers nor stereotypes mark your path".
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