ලංකාපුවත්, ශ්‍රී ලංකා ජාතික ප්‍රවෘත්ති නියෝජිත ආයතනය.

(Colombo Lankapuvath October 17) Five female scientists were elected laureates for the 2010 UNESCO-L'Oreal Award, the Paris-based United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) announced Thursday.

The award, created in 1998, champions the cause of women in science by honoring outstanding female scientists from around the world, UNESCO said in a statement.

The five female laureates are Rashika El Ridi from Cairo University, Lourdes J. Cruz from the University of the Philippines Diliman, Elaine Fuchs from the United States' Rockefeller University, Anne Dejean-Assemat from the Pasteur Institute in France and Alejandra Bravo from the Institute of Molecular Microbiology in Mexico.

Their extraordinary achievements in life science were recognized by a jury of 18 eminent scientists, including former Nobel Prize winners in medicine, Gunter Blobel and Christian de Duve.
The awards ceremony will be held on March 4, 2010, at UNESCO's headquarters in Paris. Each laureate will receive a prize of US$100,000 in recognition of her contribution to the advancement of science, the statement said.

Two winners of the 2008 UNESCO-L'Oreal Award were also this year's Nobel Prize winners, the Israeli scientist Ada Yonath for chemistry and the American scientist Elizabeth Blackburn for medicine.