On October 10th in Barcelona, the ‘DonaTIC 2024 Awards’ were handed to 12 women from the business, professional and academic fields, from a total of 70 candidates. The predoctoral researcher from the Institute of Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC) Clàudia Soriano has been awarded with a special mention in the Aerospace category.
This is the tenth edition of the DonaTIC awards promoted by the Government of Catalonia with the aim of recognising the role and talent of women in the field of new technologies and STEM disciplines, as well as to show current references to children and young people interested in these areas.
Several institutions collaborate in this edition: the Cybersecurity Agency of Catalonia, the NewSpace Strategy of Catalonia and the General Directorate of Innovation and Digital Culture of the Generalitat of Catalonia, which have offered the opportunity to opt for special mentions in these three areas.
"I am very grateful that the jury has valued my research and outreach work in a sector full of talent and experience. Awards like these are necessary to generate real and relatable references in which girls and young women can see themselves reflected," highlights Clàudia Soriano, from ICE-CSIC.
Research focused on exoplanets
Graduated in Physics from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), she received the 2021 Sant Jordi Award for the best Final Degree Project for her work entitled "Optimization of a discriminant to find the charged Higgs boson in the ATLAS experiment".
In 2020, she completed a Master's degree in astrophysics, particle physics and cosmology at the University of Barcelona (UB) and her Master's Final Project focused on the analysis of data on the compact elliptical galaxy PGC012519, using spectroscopy from the Gran Telescopio Canarias.
Currently and since 2021, she is a predoctoral researcher at ICE-CSIC, where she studies the long-term evolution of the magnetic fields of exoplanets within the framework of the IMAGINE project, funded by the European Research Council (ERC). However, her career at ICE-CSIC began with a research stay in 2019, in which she focused on the search for observational evidence of active galactic nuclei in compact elliptical galaxies and their experimental study. In addition, she was an assistant professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) in 2018 and, currently, she is also a professor-tutor at the National University of Distance Education (UNED).
Along with her work, Clàudia Soriano is committed to scientific communication and outreach. For this reason, she co-founded the Catalan Association for Physics Students and is responsible for events organisation at WIA-BCN (Women in Aerospace) association. In addition, she actively contributes to the aerospace community by organising seminars and participating in talks, events and visits to research centres.
