by Tao Wang, MD, PhD, DABT, WIT President; Sharmilee Sawant, PhD, DABT, WIT Vice President
In 2014, the Women in Toxicology Special Interest Group (WIT) established an internal Awards Nomination Committee with the goal of enhancing the recognition of female toxicologists by nominating outstanding individuals for various SOT national awards. We continued our efforts in 2015. In two years, WIT nominated a total of 11 candidates for various SOT national awards, including the Distinguished Toxicology Scholar Award, the Education Award, the Arnold J. Lehman Award, the Merit Award, and the Achievement Award. Many thanks to the 2015 committee members including Jaya Chilakapati, Brittney Baisch, Janis Hulla, Leigh Ann Burns Naas, Alexandria Lau, Sharmilee Sawant, Jessica Sapiro, Laurie Haws, Stacie Schulze, Mercedes Salvador, Phoebe Stapleton, and Nikita Joshi for their sustained efforts and contributions.
The committee began with a list of 30 nominees that were submitted by enthusiastic attendees of the WIT reception at the 2015 SOT Annual Meeting in San Diego. After the reception, Dr. Sawant, the Chair of the WIT Awards Nomination Committee and WIT Vice President, reached out to those who made the nominations to solicit the candidates’ CVs and additional supporting documents. In July, the committee reviewed the CVs and ranked candidates for individual awards. In early August, final candidates were selected, and the committee started working closely with the candidates and their nominators to prepare the application packages for submission. Some nominators/candidates asked WIT to submit the application packages on their behalf. When doing so, the WIT Awards Nomination Committee representatives prepared a letter supporting the particular candidate. All the application packages were submitted to the SOT Awards Committee in late September or early October. Each award application submitted will remain in the candidate pool for a period of three years. This means that in the near future, we will have in place a large pool of female candidates for various national SOT awards.
To further promote the recognition of accomplished female leaders in the Society, we enhanced awareness of the under-representation of female toxicologists among past awardees by publishing an article entitled “Beyond the Glass Ceiling: Unconscious Bias within the SOT?” in the SOT Communiqué. WIT leadership would like to further encourage all female toxicologists to be more forthright and proactive in recognizing their own accomplishments and the contributions of our peers. In addition to promoting women for national SOT awards, WIT has decided to create two new WIT awards: one recognizing mid-career investigators who have made significant contributions to the field of toxicology, and the other recognizing senior leaders for their long-term dedication to promoting career development opportunities for female toxicologists.