Cause is worth it

A fellowship to encourage women scientists.

On 25 November 2005, Dr Ruchi Singh was pleasantly surprised. She got an invitation to the US to conduct the rest of her medical research.

"I was not really expecting it," she gushes, having applied through a web-application for a research fellowship.

She is now the proud awardee of the Unesco-L'Oreal Women in Science Fellowship. It's quite an honour, especially since the jury of scientists includes Nobel laureates, and nominations are received from all over the world. Dr Singh was awarded the Fellowship recently in Paris along with 14 other young women scientists.

A senior researcher and PhD student at Institute of Pathology in Delhi, she is excited by the idea of working in the US on drug sensitivity and gene expression in human parasites.

"I would be given access to FDA Centre for Biologics Evaluation and Research's laboratory and the infrastructure for up to 5 months," she says.

L'Oreal is proud too "" to encourage female scientists. Explains Varsha Bhiwandkar, a brand spokesperson: "L'Oreal was started by a researcher, actually a chemist, Eugene Schueller, and today women constitute up to 55 per cent of the research workforce across our 14 research centres in France, Asia and US."

The company spends some 3 per cent of its annual turnover on R&D. The company also has funds for local educational efforts, such as its L'Oreal India for Young Women in Science scholarship that funds up to Rs 2 lakh for the higher education of school girls who do well in science.

Would this generate loyalty towards L'Oreal as a personal care brand? Perhaps "" at least among those influenced by this do-gooder mission.

But don't jump to hasty conclusions. Correlation, remember, is not causation.