Alice Abreu, Professor Emerita of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) in Brazil, PhD in Social Sciences from the University of São Paulo, Brazil (1980), and M.Sc. in Sociology from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) of the University of London (1971), was a Full Professor of Sociology at the UFRJ for twenty-five years and has published extensively in sociology of work and gender as well as, more recently, on gender and science.
Since 1999, when she joined the National Research Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) of Brazil as Vice President and was responsible for the international cooperation in S&T, her career has been closely linked to science, technology and innovation policy. From 2002 to 2006, she was the Director of the Office of Education, Science and Technology of the Organization of American States, in Washington D.C., and organized the First Ministerial Meeting of S&T in the Americas, having organized four preparatory workshops congregating the best specialists in the region around central topics of S&T. Among the preparatory meetings, one in Gender Equity and Equality in Science and Technology brought together experts in gender and S&T.
Returning to Brazil, Prof. Abreu was the Director of the Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean of the International Council for Science (ICSU) from 2007 to 2011 and coordinated the production of four Science Plans for Latin America, on Biodiversity, Sustainable Energy, Natural Hazards and Mathematics Education. In 2012, she was appointed the Regional Coordinator of the Forum in Science, Technology and Innovation for Sustainable Development of the Rio+20 by ICSU: an event of universal science, one of the most important pre-events of the Rio+20 Conference.
More recently, Prof. Abreu was the Director of GenderInSITE from 2015 to 2017, a global initiative aimed at promoting the role of women in science, innovation, technology and engineering (SITE), and demonstrating how the application of a gender lens to SITE can lead to more equitable and sustainable development. She was part of the group of experts that published Pathways to Success: Bringing a Gender Lens to the Scientific Leadership of Global Challenges (2018) and the author of Gender and Innovation: Implications for Sustainable Development, a GenderInSITE Policy Brief (2020).
Prof. Abreu has been a member of several important boards and advisory committees of different institutions and projects: since 2010, the Board of the Gender Advisory Committee of the UNCSTD and the Vice-President of the Research Committee 23 Sociology of Science and Technology of the International Sociological Association; since 2017 the Steering Committee of GenderInSITE; from 2015 to 2017 the Advisory Committee of the STEM and Gender Advancement (SAGA) UNESCO project, that aimed at offering governments and policymakers a variety of tools to improve measurements and policies for gender equality in science, technology and innovation. In 2019/2020 she was member of the Emerging Science Partners Working Group of the Challenges for International Scientific Partnerships project of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is the deputy representative of GenderInSITE at the Standing Committee for Gender Equality in Science.
Prof. Abreu has received relevant Awards and Honours such as the Ordem Nacional do Mérito Científico (Comendador) of Brazil in 2001; the Palmes Académiques (Officier), of the Ministère de la Jeunesse, de l’Éducation Nationale et de la Recherche. République Française, in 2003. She was awarded the Florestan Fernande Prize for Sociology in 2009 and the ANPOCS Award in Academic Excellence Antonio Flavio Pierucci Sociology in 2013. In February 2020 she received the Honorary Mention at the first edition of the “Carolina Bori Ciência & Mulher” Award of the Brazilian Society for the Advancement of Science.
Rio de Janeiro, January 2021