Recently, a large group of women chemists from the United States and China met for a three-day conference in Beijing. The workshop was sponsored by the National Science Foundation, the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Committee on the Advancement of Women in Chemistry (COACh) at University of Oregon. The conference was held at the Institute of Chemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
As is the case in the United States, women make up a small percentage of the academic chemists in China. Women from both countries agreed that establishing more international research collaborations would help women in their career advancement. Among the topics the women discussed at the conference were drug design and delivery, energy storage, biosensors and robotics, and new techniques in cancer screening.