During this captivating evening at the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) in Brussels, inspirational women in STEM leadership will share experiences and advice from their leadership journeys.
From leading in male-dominated environments to showing up as your authentic self, this unique event will leave you inspired, energised and equipped with valuable tools to continue your leadership journey with confidence.
Amazing line-up:
🎯 Prof. Conny Aerts, Astrophysicist and group leader at KU Leuven
🎯 Prof. Sarah Baatout, Director Nuclear Medical Applications at SCK CEN
🎯 Ir. Audrey Dogimont, Team Leader at ACG
Many thanks to the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) for sponsoring this event.
Conny Aerts
Conny Aerts graduated as mathematician from Antwerp University (1988) and defended her PhD thesis in astrophysics at KU Leuven (1993). Competitive personal grants allowed her to work as independent postdoctoral fellow of the Research Foundation Flanders (1994 – 2001), performing numerous stays in Europe, Chile and the USA. She was appointed as Lecturer (2001), Associate Professor (2004), and Full professor (2007) at KU Leuven. She also leads the Chair in Asteroseismology at the Radboud University Nijmegen (NL, 2004+) and is External Scientific Member of the Max Planck Society (Heidelberg, 2019+).
Conny’s research covers stellar astrophysics, including stellar structure & evolution and variable stars. She is a pioneer of asteroseismology, which received a major boost thanks to the CoRoT (2006+), Kepler (2009+), and TESS (2018+) space missions. Prior to high-precision space photometry, Conny developed rigorous mathematical methods to detect and identify non-radial stellar oscillations in high-resolution time-series spectroscopy. Her team also designed and applied statistical classification methods in a machine-learning context, discoving numerous gravity-mode pulsators in space photometry. As Chair in Asteroseismology at the Radboud University Nijmegen, Conny introduced herself into the topic of subdwarf stars, their binarity and pulsations, with current focus on development and exploitation of BlackGEM in tandem with gravitational wave studies.
In 2008, Conny was awarded an ERC Advanced Grant, PROSPERITY to exploit CoRoT and Kepler space photometry. Her PhD students made major contributions, such as the discovery of non-radial pulsation modes, of dipole mixed modes, and of non-rigid rotation in red giants, following her own detections of internal mixing and rotation in massive stars. The ERC offered her a 2nd AdG, MAMSIE (Mixing and Angular Momentum tranSport in massIvE Stars, 2016-2021) to bridge stellar physics, asteroseismology, and 3D simulations in order to quantify limitations in stellar evolution theory. This culminated in the 2012 Francqui Prize and the 2020 5-year FWO Excellence Award, also termed Belgian and Flemish Nobel Prizes, where Conny was the first woman to receive these prestigious awards in Science & Technology since their creation in 1933 and 1960, respectively. Conny is the recipient of the 2022 Kavli prize in Astrophysics and the 2024 Crafoord Prize in Astronomy; she acts as corresponding Principle Investigator of the 2022 ERC Synergy grant 4D-STAR.
Conny supervised ~100 Master & PhD students and externally recruited postdocs. She took part as expert in tens of PhD examination committees, has been teaching various courses in the Master Astronomy & Astrophysics at Leuven & Nijmegen universities, and is engaged in gender-related, mentor-mentee and science communication & outreach activities. Conny served on numerous international committees and boards. She is curently heavily involved in the ESA space mission PLATO (2026+) as Belgian PI.
Sarah Baatout
Prof. Sarah Baatout is the head of the radiobiology unit and Deputy Institute Director of Nuclear Medical Applications at SCK CEN, the Belgian Nuclear Research Centre. She holds a PhD in Biochemistry (1990, UCLouvain) and teaches radiobiology and space biology as a guest professor at UGent and KULeuven.
She has been working for more than 20 years on investigating the impact of ionizing radiation on health through the development of better radiotherapy treatments for cancer patients and on the discovery of innovative biomarkers for personalized medicine of astronauts and patients.
Dr. Baatout was awarded as the BeSpace personality of the year in 2018 and was nominated by Femmes d’Aujourd’hui as one of the 85 women that make Belgium move.
Sarah is also the head of the Belgian delegation at UNSCEAR (United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation), chair of the Belgian Hadrontherapy Consortium, member of various advisory committees for the European Space Agency and member of the High Scientific Council of the European Nuclear Society.
Audrey Dogimont
Audrey Dogimont is a civil engineer in chemistry and materials science and Team Leader at AGC. She graduated in 2009. Her studies focused on biomedicine, polymers and the mechanics of materials. During a fair, she was introduced to the company’s glass expertise and discovered the research opportunities offered by AGC. When she visited the research centre, she fell in love with the laboratories and the impressive resources available and was hired to research the composition of glass for solar applications, particularly solar panels and mirrors.
From 2009 to 2016, she progressed from junior researcher to project manager. In 2016, after expressing her desire to move into production, she joined the Moustier plant as a Process Engineer and then Line Manager. In 2020, she returned to research and became Team Leader.
She currently manages two separate teams, each with its own challenges. The first team focuses on glass products. They develop new glass products and deal with the colour, composition of raw materials, optical properties and quality of glass for a variety of applications, from architecture to automotive. The second team works on thin glass, used in certain screens and smartphones. They manage composition, chemical tempering and cutting. Her role also involves meeting customers to discuss their future needs, translating them into concrete objectives, and managing budgets.
