Agilent Technologies supports women researchers at IHES

Press release – 13 April 2023

The Agilent Technologies Foundation has made a €100,000 gift to Friends of IHES supporting women scientists who come to IHES as part of its general visiting program. The gift contributes to the Friends of IHES endowment fund and its proceeds will fund the visits of women researchers. The gift will thus promote gender diversity among visiting researchers at IHES.

Every year IHES welcomes about 200 researchers as part of its general visiting program, which is central to the Institute’s scientific activity. These extraordinary researchers are selected by the Scientific Council and come to the Institute from across the world in order to benefit from its calm and quiet environment and from the possibility to interact with some of the best researchers in their field.

Only about ten percent of applications to the Institute’s visiting program come from women and in order to bridge this gender gap, IHES has been implementing a series of initiatives that aim to promote diversity and inclusion at IHES.

Agilent Technologies and its Foundation are committed to promoting diversity and inclusion, particularly across the science and technology sectors. Their €100,000 gift to the Friends of IHES endowment fund, whose proceeds will finance the visits of women scientists at IHES, intends to help the Institute increase the proportion of applications to its general visiting program made by women researchers. IHES expect that this will result in an increased proportion of women researchers visiting the Institute.

“Agilent is proud to support IHES, an organization that is not only successful in nurturing the advancement of knowledge, but also a force for supporting female mathematicians and theoretical physicists,” said Darlene Solomon, Agilent’s chief technology officer. “These disciplines are foundational to our multidisciplinary research advancements in the life sciences, diagnostics and applied chemical markets.”

The gift will be matched by the Simons Foundation International as part of their $10M matching pledge that is helping launch the endowment fund. Marilyn and James Simons, co-Chairs of Friends of IHES, said: “We are delighted to see that corporate sponsors in the USA are committed to diversity and inclusion and willing to promote diversity initiatives also in basic sciences.”

Emmanuel Ullmo, director of IHES, commented: “Women are an incredible resource to the advancement of science and it is essential that they are more represented across all STEM disciplines, including at IHES. It is wonderful that the Institute can count on sponsors such as Agilent Technologies. With their support we can move a step closer to making science more inclusive.”

On March 30^th, 2023, IHES representatives, taking advantage of their stay in California, visited the headquarters of Agilent Technologies in Santa Clara. Emmanuel Ullmo, director of IHES, Claire Lenz, director of development and communications as well as Kristina Lutsik, deputy director of development and communications, along with Jim and Marilyn Simons, Co-Chairs of the Board of Friends of IHES, met with Darlene Solomon, Chief Technology Officer and Member of the Board of Directors of the Agilent Foundation, Tom Beermann, VP Global Communications and Executive Director of the Agilent Foundation and Sally Frank, Manager of the Philanthropic Programs. IHES and Friends of IHES representatives visited two Agilent’s Centers of Excellence and got a chance to meet several women scientists employed by different divisions of Agilent. The guided tour was followed by a friendly luncheon.