This year at the SolarPACES 2023 conference in Sydney, the voice and talent of underrepresented genders were heard!

For the first time, a gender identity question was added to the registration form, in order to establish gender statistics (left pie chart below). Around 14% of attendees declared themselves as women and non binary, 73% as men. 14% did not provide this information. Considering only declared gender identities (right pie chart below), 16% were of underrepresented genders and 84% were men.

Last year, the participation of women was estimated around 16% from the attendees list. The participation of underrepresented genders thus seems to remain stable, although this year the gender identity of a non-negligible part of the attendees is unknown. We hope that next year, more people will answer the gender question to have more reliable data.

It is worth noticing that with 25% of women speakers, the “Advanced Materials, Manufacturing and Components” topic far exceeded the global participation of women to the conference.

Also this year, half of the topic track chairs were women, who in turn suggested more female session chairs.

Kudos ladies, we hope to see even more of you next year at SolarPACES 2024 in Italy!

Following the retirement of Dr. Eduardo Zarza, who received the SolarPACES Lifetime Achievement award 2023 with Pr. Robert Pitz-Paal, Dr. Aránzazu Fernández García (CIEMAT) will be the new Spanish representative at SolarPACES Executive Committee.

She is head of the Materials for concentrating solar thermal technologies (UMAT) research unit, and responsible of the Solar reflector durability analysis and optical characterization laboratory (OPAC), at Plataforma Solar de Almería, Spain.

She has a long experience in the optical characterization and durability analysis of solar reflectors and the optimization of cleaning techniques for concentrating solar thermal plants.

Women+ in Concentrated Solar rejoices that this year the SolarPACES technical innovation award was granted to a gender diverse team including two women and three men, for a record-breaking solar absorber coating.

This team was born of a collaboration between Ms. Kaoru Tsuda, CEO of Nano Frontier Technology Japanese company, and Dr Juan Felipe Torres and Dr Joe Coventry of the Australian National University. Two PhD candidates were also involved in the developments, Ms. Sahar Hosseini and Mr. Yifan Guo. Kudos to the team!

This year at the SolarPACES 2023 conference in Sydney, with the support of the organizing committee (thank you!), the Women+ in Concentrated Solar group was quite visible and active.

We presented our group and its activities during the opening session, including gender statistics on attendees. During the wrap-up closing session, female topic track chairs also showed gender statistics for reviewers, session chairs and presenting authors.

Many attendees of all genders visited our W+CS desk to meet us and offer their congratulations and support, and to pick up our collector pin badge and brochure.

Some attendees have joined our expert database (welcome!) and shared a drink with us during our informal networking happy hour!

Overall we are very happy with the positive feedback we got from you, dear attendees. It was a nice way to celebrate our first anniversary 🙂

Thank you all for your support, and see you next year in Italy for more events!

Happy International Women in Engineering Day! #INWED23

Women+ in Concentrated Solar supports women and underrepresented genders in the concentrated solar thermal sector, bringing visibility to their work and promoting them as speakers, chairs and decision-makers.

Join our expert database!

#InternationalWomenInEngineeringDay #womeninengineering #womeninstem #solarthermal #concentratedsolar