Highly Commended for National Mentorship Award

Dr Frédérique Vanholsbeeck was awarded Highly Commended by the Judges of the Miriam Dell Excellence in Science Mentoring Award from the Association for Women in the Sciences (AWIS) for her equity and mentoring work in Physics.

She was the only female academic when appointed to the University of Auckland Department in 2005, and has subsequently championed and implemented processes to ensure unbiased hiring and mentoring of staff, selection of scholarship awardees and identification of colloquium speakers.

As a result of the physics equity committee that she leads, the Department of Physics, University of Auckland, is the only recognised Pleiades Organisation in New Zealand (Bronze level), bestowed by the Inclusions, Diversity and Equity in Astronomy (IDEA) of the Astronomical Society of Australia. She was nominated for the award by PhD candidate Fang (Rachel) Ou.