Professor Dava Newman is the Apollo Program Professor of Astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a Harvard–MIT Health, Sciences, and Technology faculty member. She is also served as NASA Deputy Administrator from 2015–2017, nominated by President Obama and unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
Abstract:
Life expectancy in Iceland has been gradually rising in recent decades as society progresses in other areas. Data from Statistics Iceland show that on average, both men and women in Iceland can expect to live to over 80 years old, which is among the highest life expectancies in Europe. Furthermore, a child born today is more likely to see their 100th birthday than not. The ageing population has prompted scientists to start looking at various issues to do with rising numbers of elderly people in our society, including the impact on the social system and the healthcare system and ways to ensure that as many people as possible are able to grow old with dignity.
"There are concerns in our society about the numbers of women leaving the teaching profession, including the fact that many young teachers do not last long in the job. Sometimes the discussion focuses more on worries about getting more men into teaching, but the fact is that when there are vacant teaching positions, gender and age don't really matter – the only thing that matters is whether you are able to work with the children and teenagers who need a teacher," says Ingólfur Ásgeir Jóhannesson, professor at the Faculty of Education and Diversity. Along with his colleagues, he is currently investigating how newly qualified female teachers manage during their first two years as compulsory school teachers and to what extent their experiences in compulsory schools are related to preconceptions about sex and gender roles.
Unnur Þorsteinsdóttir, Vice President of Research at deCODE genetics and the new Dean of the School of Health Sciences at the University of Iceland, is the most influential female scientist in Europe and the fifth most influential in the world. This is according to a new list compiled by Research.com, based on an analysis of the research output of over 160,000 female scientists.
Research.com is a platform for sharing information about research, scientific conferences and researchers. As well as discussing science in a broad sense, the website regularly publishes various rankings of outstanding journals, researchers and conferences in different fields.
Hey, how was spring in Tröllaskagi in 6321 BC, again?
Is there an answer to this peculiar question?
Yes... or close enough.
We can get a fair idea thanks to current research conducted here in Iceland through a collaboration between scientists at the University of Iceland and the University of Colorado Boulder in the USA. The project focuses on isolating biomolecules preserved in lake sediment. Scientists are drilling down into the lake bed and extracting sediment cores. These are then examined from a geochemical and biochemical perspective, looking thousands of years back in time with the ability to differentiate between individual years. It is best to drill in the winter when the lakes are frozen, but climate change could make this work more difficult in the near future, due to more extreme variations in the weather.
The Aurora Alliance, of which the University of Iceland is a member, has been awarded a 2 million EUR grant from the Horizon 2020 – Science with and for Society (SwafS) - programme to strengthen and empower research support and innovation within the alliance. The University of Iceland managed the application process on behalf of the Aurora Alliance and will coordinate the project.
Live stream: https://livestream.com/hi/doktorsvornjohannestheodoruswelling
Ph.D. student: Johannes Theodorus Welling
Dissertation title: Glacier tourism and climate change adaptation in Iceland
Opponents:
Dr. Christopher Lemieux, Associate Professor and John McMurry Research Chair in Environmental Geography, Wilfrid Laurier University, Ontario, Canada
Dr. Halvor Dannevig, Research Director at Western Norway Research Institute
Advisors: Dr. Þorvarður Árnason, Director of the University of Iceland's Research Centre in Hornafjörður and dr. Rannveig Ólafsdóttir, Professor at the Faculty of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Iceland