LNVH Dinner meeting "Better Through Technology"

Op 15 november 2012, vindt van 17.30 tot 21 uur aan de Technische Universiteit Delft de volgende landelijke bijeenkomst plaats, georganiseerd door DEWIS (Delft Women in Science), in samenwerking met het LNVH. De bijeenkomst is in het Engels.
Deelname aan deze bijeenkomst is gratis.  U kunt inschrijven met een e-mail onder vermelding van dieetwensen via: info@lnvh.nl

The Dutch Network of Women Professors (LNVH) and Delft Women in Science (DEWIS) organize on 15 November 2012 a dinner meeting, entitled "Better Through Technology". The meeting is primarily intended for female professors and associate professors, but other interested women scientists are also welcome to join. Language is English. Free entrance, after registration at LNVH via info@lnvh.nl before November 5. Please mention any diet requirements.

15 November 2012 | 17H30- 21H - location: Science Centre TU Delft

'Nightingale power'
Florence Nightingale is best remembered for her work as a nurse during the Crimean War and her contribution towards the reform of the sanitary conditions in military field hospitals. It is less well known that Nightingale loved mathematics, especially statistics, and how this love played an important part in her life's work. Nightingale's knowledge of mathematics and statistics became evident when she used her collected data to calculate the mortality rate in the hospital where she worked. These calculations showed that an improvement of the sanitary methods employed would result in a decrease in the number of deaths. By February 1855, the mortality rate had dropped from 60% to less than 43%.

Health care is much more than just mathematics or statistics, however health care certainly benefits from technological innovations. Thanks to continuous technological innovations, diseases are (better) treatable, or can be diagnosed earlier. This national meeting of the LNVH, organized by DEWIS (the network of women scientists at TU Delft) is about women scientists who contribute to the improvement of health care. A number of scientists who will speak about their research.

Programme

• Prof.dr. Jenny Dankelman, professor Medical Instruments at Delft University, hopes that in 2050 it will be possible in the operation room to have access to all places in the human body by using innovative tools. "Virtually all operations could be carried out, with minimal damage to the patient." In her research field, she is facing the challenge of inventing (or developing) smart, technological solutions for the most impossible problems and applications.
• Dr. Kristina Djanashvili, assistant professor at TU Delft, developed a new imaging agent that can pinpoint and visualise tumours more accurately.Currently she is doing research on combining imaging with radiation therapy, by using holmium. "Tumours create large networks of blood vessels," explains Djanashvili. "The size of the radioactive holmium particles is chosen with a view to the diameter of these blood vessels. Particles equipped with special targeting groups get stuck at exactly the right place: only in cancerous tissue. There they release their radiation to destroy the cancer cells." This form of internal radiation may be promising for the treatment of liver cancer, which is hard to combat with conventional methods.
• Prof.dr. Isabel Arends, Professor of Biocatalysis and Organic Chemistry at Delft University and chairman of DEWIS, will tell about the network, its objectives and its activities.

Interested to join?
The dinner meeting has free entrance, after registration via info@lnvh.nl. Please mention your name, university and, if applicable, your special diet.