International Women's Day

Güssün Güneş completed her PhD in Information and Documentation Management Science at Marmara University in 2009. In August 2012 she started as an assistant professor at Marmara University and was also appointed Director of Marmara University Libraries. She has worked at Koç University’s Suna Kıraç Library (1996–2012), undertook an internship at Duke University Medical Center Library and has visited several medical libraries in the US and Europe.

She is President of Anatolian University Libraries Consortium and a member of the Turkish Librarians’ Association, University and Research Librarians’ Association, University and Research Librarians’ Association Medical Work Group, EAHIL (The European Association for Health Information and Libraries).

She has been teaching as from 2012, as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Institutional Archives and as Head of the Department of Libraries and Documentation at Marmara University. Güneş taught Medical Documentation at Bezmialem Foundation University and also Medical Library Science in the Secretariat Division of the same institution over the period 2015-2016. She currently teaches "Communication Models and Techniques" at Marmara University Engineering School and "The Organization of Knowledge" at Medeniyet University and Research Methods in Health Sciences at İstanbul Medipol University.  Her academic studies include research in academic library science, medical library science, health literacy, digital libraries, information and technical services in library science, electronic resource management, metadata systems and classification, cataloging, the Semantic Web, health informatics, conservation studies in libraries, endurable paper, professional health, dust and pollution in libraries and new generation library buildings.

Güssün Güneş has authored and published many academic articles, books, conference papers and posters.

Latifa Bouanzi completed her University Master’s degree in Library, Information Sciences and Archiving at the Institute of Documentation (University of Tunis) in October 1997, and flew right away to France to continue her studies. She has a Master degree in Computer of Information Science from the National School of Information and Library Sciences (ENSSIB - École Nationale Supérieure des Sciences de l'Information et des Bibliothèques, Villeurbanne, France).

Latifa has as well completed a University Master’s degree in Literature, Civilization and Foreign Culture Arab specialty in order to be a translator. However, her love of Information Sciences took over and made her focus on this field.

She’s currently an information assistant with 17 years of experience at the library of the International Agency for Research on cancer (IARC, Lyon-France), the specialized cancer agency of the World Health Organization (WHO). She manages the document delivery services, the library collection and the electronic resources. She gives training courses on different themes such as reference management tools and systematic reviews. She was part of both WHO programs, Hinari and the multilingual training program. In addition, Latifa taught Computer Information Science at the University Jean Moulin in Lyon for five years.

Latifa loves very much learning foreign languages. Her mother tongue is Arabic and she learned French and English in Tunisia that she uses in France. Despite her expertise of these languages, Latifa didn’t understand a word of Spanish when she first visited Spain in 2016 and she decided from that time to study the language, which is now her fourth speaking language.

Latifa is also a mother of three children, two boys (14 and 12) and a daughter - Selma, 9 years old. In other words she has to cope with three successive adolescent crises in the coming years, wish her good luck!

Ana Barroso Abecasis is Portuguese and was born in Lisbon (18th December 1978), is married and has 3 children. She trained as a medical doctor and as a pharmacist. She finished her PhD in Medical Sciences at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium in May 2009. She is also a specialist in Bioinformatics.

Ana is an Assistant Professor at Institute for Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (IHMT), NOVA University of Lisbon since May 2019 and Director of the Unit for International Public Health and Biostatistics. She teaches Research Methods in Health, Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, Health of the Vulnerable Populations and Global Health at IHMT and at the Faculty of Medical Sciences-NOVA. She supervises or supervised 9 PhD thesis, 12 master thesis, 5 post-doc researchers and 7 short-term visitor researchers.

She coordinates or coordinated 5 national and international projects and participates or participated in 10 national or international projects. She coordinates the research line of Global Pathogen Dispersion & Mobility of Populations at the Global Health and Tropical Medicine Research Center, where she was also involved in the development of the research strategy and infrastructure of bioinformatics. She also member of several European networks of antiviral drug resistance, including EUResist and European Society for Translational Antiviral Research. Her research interests include Virology, Microbiology, Antimicrobial and Antiviral Drug Resistance, Bioinformatics, Research Methods in Health, Transmission of Infectious Diseases, Evolution and Global Health.

In 2012, Ana received the L’Oreal Portugal FCT Unesco Medal of Honour for Women in Science, in 2016 and 2017 she received the prize of Gilead Génese programme and in 2019 received the Ricardo Camacho Award from Associação Portuguesa para o Estudo Clínico da SIDA. She received 3 awards for best oral communication and 1 for best poster presentation in national and international conferences, always as last author.

Ana has published around 68 articles in international peer-reviewed journals, including Lancet Infectious Diseases, Clinical Infectious Diseases and AIDS, 4 conference papers and 2 book chapters; 33 oral communications and 70 poster presentations in national or international conferences. Accumulates 1814 citations with an h-index of 23 (Google Scholar) or 1129 citations with an h-index of 17 (ResearcherID).

Ana is member of the Council of the NOVA University of Lisbon since 2018, coordinates the Public Health Specialization Course for Medical Doctors and is member of the Scientific Committee of the Master for Statistics in Health since 2015 and of the Masters for Public Health and Development since 2018. Ana is member of the Advisory Board of the Fast Track Cities Initiative- Lisbon and of the Portuguese NGO Grupo de Ativistas em Tratamentos VIH (GAT).  Between 2005 and 2017, she organized (2 editions in Lisbon) and lectured at the International Bioinformatics Workshop on Virus Evolution and Molecular Epidemiology. In 2011 and in 2017, she organized the first Bioinformatics courses in Belém do Pará (Brasil) and in Praia (Cape Verde).

Joana Filipa Machado de Morais Afonso, is the Director General of the National Institute of Health Research in Angola. Joana has a PhD in Science (Parasitic Biology and Infectious Diseases) from Oswaldo Cruz Institute/Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, Brazil, Masters in Imunology by the King´s College London and a degree in Biomedical Sciences from University of Brighton in U.K. She was recently the Vice-Dean for Scientific Affairs, at Faculty of Medicine, University Agostinho Neto (2015-2016) and Deputy Director for the technical and scientific area of the Clinical Analysis Laboratory of the Private Practice Clinic Sagrada Esperança (2006-2008). She has been teaching courses in University Agostinho Neto in the fields of Molecular Biology, Biochemistry and Genetics. Her research has focused on HIV and related diseases, and have published articles in scientific journals such as Emerging Infectious Diseases, PLoS One and Infection, Genetics and Evolution. In addition to HIV, its most recent research interests are related to arboviruses, namely Zika, Dengue and Chikungunya, as well as health determinants in Angola. With activities in the public health sector, she has advised public entities in the public health area and has been involved in training, in matters related to the strengthening and training of technical staff in the area of public health emergencies and laboratory surveillance, also in professional ethics, implementation of internal and external quality control in reference and research institutions, in addition to the implementation of laboratory management systems and integrated epidemiological surveillance.

Note: Angola will be starting their COVID-19 vaccination plan on the week of March 2nd and Dr. Joana is part of the front line team.

 Tessa Jordan, PhD, is the Program Head for Sustainable Business Leadership and Faculty in the Communication Department at the British Columbia Institute of Technology. As an educator, Tessa specializes in business communications and values-based business, focusing on how the private sector can create and communicate social and environmental value to support the just transition to a regenerative economy. As a researcher, Tessa studies the role of art and culture in social and political movements with a focus on the Canadian women’s movement.  Her book Feminist Acts: Branching Out Magazine and the Making of Canadian Feminism was published by the University of Alberta Press in 2019.

 Geraldine Eliot is from South Africa, where she earned a BA in Film and Media Studies, Honours in Creative Writing, and MA in English at the University of Cape Town. She contributed to some of the first student-focused online magazines in South Africa, was arts editor for Varsity Newspaper, and taught various film and writing courses.  After emigrating to Canada, Geraldine began teaching Business Communications & Technical Writing at BCIT. She started Meerkat Communications, a content development business. She also works as an instructional designer and writer and continues to teach at BCIT.