Ana Ros Camacho wins Westerdijk Award 2019

This year’s winner of the Westerdijk Award is Ana Ros Camacho, researcher at the Mathematics Institute. The Dean of the Faculty of Science presented the award to Ros Camacho on Tuesday, 3 September during the opening of the faculty’s academic year.

Students and refugees

According to the jury, Ros Camacho has contributed to diversity and inclusion in several ways, even though it is not part of her official responsibilities. She has founded an organisation to support Spanish-speaking students during their studies at Utrecht University, she personally coaches female mathematicians, and she was one of the first to open her lectures up to refugees.

Women and other underrepresented groups

In the field of research, Ros Camacho is currently organising the first ‘Women in Mathematical Physics Meeting’ in Mexico; she is the co-organiser of the Geometry Centre Seminar, where she works to ensure that speakers from underrepresented groups are invited; she sat in the panel for Positive Discrimination: Advantages and Drawbacks; and she led the way in organising the successful seminar for both the Mathematics Institute and the Institute for Theoretical Physics.

Westerdijk Award

The Westerdijk Award is presented to employees who have worked to create a more diverse organisation. The candidates are nominated by their own colleagues, after which the Diversity Committee chooses the winner.   

Johanna Westerdijk was the first female professor in the Netherlands. She was appointed as Professor of Phytopathology at Utrecht University on 10 February 1917.