Scientist Ines forges ahead in her career

Kunang Helmi-Picard, Contributor, Paris

The International Women's Day on March 8 this year means more for Dr. Ines Atmosukarto since it's the day when the 32-year-old scientist was awarded one of 15 Unesco-L'Oreal scientific fellowships in Paris.

Visibly excited, the very first Indonesian to have won an award since the Unesco-L'Oreal Women in Science Program begun in 2000, was thrilled at the possibility of furthering her team's research in microbiology with the US$20,OOO fellowship at an university of her own choice.

Four days later at the official Unesco ceremony for the five major awards, presided by the 1974 French Nobel prize winner for medicine, Professor Christian de Duve, Ines was elegantly dressed in a pale green silk sarong and white kebaya (traditional blouse).

Every year, five major Awards for Scientific Research are given to mature women scientists from five areas: Africa, Arab States, Asia & the Pacific, Europe-North America and Latin America & the Caribbean.

In addition, 15 fellowships are awarded to young women scientists starting their professional careers. Some 91 women scientists from 45 countries across the world have already been recognized for excellence in research, or received encouragement to pursue their careers.

As Japanese Koichiro Matsuura, director general of Unesco declared: "The network constituted by these women of science is called on to play an important role wherever the future of science is at stake."

A Unesco team carries out discreet inquiries each year in 190 countries as to which young women scientists are suitable for the fellowships and which mature woman scientist is worthy of a major award. Then, an established scientific jury presided by Professor De Duve in Paris makes the final choice.

Ines -- whose childhood was spent in Algeria attending a French elementary school and then secondary school in Indonesia -- has a Rumanian mother who is a biochemist. Her mother is now occupied looking after her grandchild while her eldest daughter is busy undertaking research.

Ines has visited Paris once before as the winner of a French dictation competition. "In 1985 when I won the competition, I also stayed at the very same hotel with this stunning view of the Eiffel Tower," she exclaimed.

The young microbiologist graduated from senior high school in 1991 and immediately applied for a scholarship to Australia. After intensive testing she was accepted by Adelaide University, which she chose because their Cellular and Molecular Biology program was the best in Australia. Here, Ines also earned her doctorate before returning to Indonesia to become a member of a research team at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences, more specifically the Research Center for Biotechnology based in Cibinong, West Java. Ines also met her Indonesian pilot husband in Australia.

The young scientist denies ever really having experienced any discrimination because she was a woman while studying or undertaking research.

However, she did point out that only about 15 women were among the 100 chosen from Indonesia to win scholarships to Australia in 1992. Besides that, when she came back from Australia with her doctorate, many refused to acknowledge her ability until she was accepted by a well-established scientific project in Indonesia.

Petite, yet full of energy, Ines describes her natural-product drug discovery project using a special group of microorganisms, known as endophytes, which colonize the living tissue of plants. These have the potential to provide new sources of antibiotic, anticancer and antifungal drugs. She plans to collect a selection of plants from Indonesian forests, which have already been used in traditional medicine.

"Four months of my fellowship will be spent at the Department of Plant Sciences at Montana State University, USA and in the eight remaining months, I will use the funds to further our team project on plant research back in Indonesia. Now we will be able to travel within Indonesia into the forests themselves, instead of only relying on Botanical Gardens such as Bogor."

Her main project, together with her team of 12 fellow members, is to extract molecular compounds from the endophyte cultures, screen them to see which ones show antimicrobial activity and test the most promising ones for their potential as new sources of drugs.

Ines thus hopes that if the hidden potential of Indonesian plants for medicinal use can be demonstrated, there will be a strong argument to reduce deforestation in Indonesia.

For the moment, an additional problem is that of refrigerating the samples adequately while being faced with an erratic electricity supply. Private sponsors have sprung up to help their research and to solve the problem of maintaining this "library of plant samples and endophytes" extracted from the plants. Ines hopes for clues from the local population as to which plants to seek out.

The first venue for field-research will be the island of Riau which harbors over 218 indigenous plants of great interest for the intensive research program. Gradually this program will cover the entire Indonesian archipelago. As the end product is of commercial value, industrial sponsors may be interested in furthering this research and Ines does hope that scientific cooperation with other Southeast Asian countries, such as Singapore, will also be feasible.

Before returning home to Indonesia Ines is visiting her grandmother in Bucharest, Rumania whom she has not seen in 20 years. She will begin her fellowship program in May and return to Cibinong to conclude the remaining eight months of her fellowship together with her home research team.

"This is most exciting because medical results may improve the standard of rural health in Indonesia using natural material found in Indonesia itself," she said.

With her bubbly personality and infectious enthusiasm, Ines proves that combining a career in scientific research while being a dedicated wife and mother is not an insurmountable and dreary task.