Diana Bracco: “Girls, do as they do, aim for science!”

The digital campaign of the scientist Ilaria Capua

This idea would not have become real without the generosity of Veronica and Andrea Bocelli with Sugar Music and of Giorgia with Microphonica / Sony Music Italy.

“I’m launching an appeal to all young women: do not accept the preconception that would hold that women are less suited to the scientific professions, whose skills are increasingly demanded by the business world.” This is the heartfelt message conveyed by Diana Bracco, businesswoman devoted to research and President of the Bracco Foundation, together with many remarkable Italian female scientists who have been photographed by the celebrated Gerald Bruneau.

“In order to give a meaningful contribution to the advancement of scientific culture among women and to raise awareness of the importance of female expertise in fields like Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, which are still considered a male domain,” explains Diana Bracco, “we have organized a photography exhibition which pays tribute to women in science, and to a highly skilled science that is anything but tedious or dull, but rather enjoyable and fascinating.”

Titled Life as a Scientist, the exhibit depicts the faces and skills of some of the most distinguished Italian female researchers whose stories are linked by a shared tenacity, courage and an irrepressible thirst for knowledge. Mathematicians, chemists, pharmacologists, engineers, astrophysicists, biologists, surgeons, paleontologists, and information technicians are the ambassadors of the “Women against stereotypes” project (www.100esperte.it), an idea from the Pavia Observatory and the Gi.U.Li.A. Association in collaboration with the Bracco Foundation and with the support of the European Commission’s Representation in Italy.

Bracco Foundation's photography exhibit, Life as a Scientist, after being set up in Milan at the exhibition space of the CDI - Centro Diagnostico Italiano, at the Embassy of Italy in Washington, in Philadelphia and now at the Italian Cultural Institute of Chicago, will then travel next to various prominent locations Los Angeles to New York.