This year that is ending, the second of the pandemic, gave a lot to talk about in different fields of science and the human work that was behind it. The scientific journal Nature released this year's end Nature's 10, the ten people who stood out the most, including political activists, epidemiologists, bioinformaticians, physicists, engineers, researchers and politicians.
This list is the result of a choice made by the editors of the publication, who are emphatic that these names are not given in any particular order and do not constitute an award.
For the second consecutive year, the magazine highlighted only people who helped science, since on other occasions space was allocated to those who were the subject of controversy.
[ These were the ten people who took the lead in science in 2019 ]
Winnie Byanyima: a warrior for vaccines
Her profession is far from the work she does. Winnie Byanyima is an Astrophysical Engineer and was born and lives in Uganda. She joined social struggles from a very young age, which shaped her life until she became one of the main activists for equity in vaccines against covid-19. It was a long history of struggles. In 1981 she joined a guerrilla movement against authoritarian President Idi Amin; in 1994 she was already in Parliament and in 2019 she was appointed president of UNAIDS.
Today she is the president of the NGO Alliance of People for Vaccines. From there she has raised her voice so that the gaps in access to vaccines are smaller. However, she is frustrated to see that dozens of countries already offer reinforcements to her population, while some close to hers have only 6% of people with a complete scheme.
"We can't sell life-saving technology the same way you sell a designer bag," she Byanyima told Nature. Her strategy is to enlist world leaders to convince them that global equity in vaccines will benefit everyone. "Without political strategies to reduce inequity, we're not going anywhere," she said.
[These are the scientists who gave the world the most talk in 2018]
Guillaume Cabanac: The Science of Computers and How to Spot Scientific Hoaxes
His job is to find computer bugs, but since the pandemic began he spends two hours a day tracking down “hoax phrases” in manuscripts and scientific publications.
Guillaume Cabanac works for the University of Toulouse in France and, with the help of search engines and careful analysis, he has been able to see errors in preprint publications, but also in already published and peer-reviewed articles.
He and his team have found more than 400 "devious phrases," as they are called, in more than 2,000 posts. This has motivated articles from prestigious journals to be retracted.
How does he do it? The first time a person sees a phrase that seems strange to him, once it is verified that it is “tortuous”, it enters a search algorithm. Every time a post is parsed, the algorithms look to see if it is present, and if so, read further to determine the reliability of the post.
[ A Costa Rican is part of the top 10 scientists of 2015 ]
Timnit Gebru: the ethics of artificial intelligence
Timnit Gebru lost his job at Google as a specialist in artificial intelligence, today, after his concerns about the ethical use of this discipline, he is dedicated to research and activism on the subject.
Originally from Ethiopia, she traveled to the United States, where she also worked at Microsoft. At Google, her job was to see the possible ethical harm of artificial intelligence.
Late last year, she was the lead author of research on language impacts and biases in search models using artificial intelligence. That system was one of those used by Google.
Gebru indicates that she received internal pressure not to publish the research. Google says she quit, she claims to have been fired.
She is now dedicated to building a model of how artificial intelligence should be done to help people. Her institute will create models and applications that don't depend on the big databases and computing power that only big companies have.
[ Christiana Figueres stands out among the 10 scientists of 2015 ]
John Jumper: Predict Proteins
What if determining the structure of a protein was as easy as doing an Internet search? That question was asked by artificial intelligence specialist John Jumper.
This Englishman is one of the creators of the AlphaFold tool, which, with the help of artificial intelligence, seeks to "predict" the structure and characteristics of different proteins.
When he started working on artificial intelligence he had no more than a basic understanding of what a protein was, but later he changed his career focus and went on to study for a graduate degree in Chemistry.
One of AlphaFold's proudest projects is the mapping of the nuclear pore complex, a "giant molecular machine" that acts as a "gatekeeper" for the genes of eukaryotic cells (with a nucleus). The work combined the structures from AlphaFold and other predictions with the experimental structures. There, the characteristics of more than 1,000 proteins were seen.
Meaghan Kall: the epidemiologist who knows how to communicate
She did not study communication, but she has a way of communicating the most complex concepts of Epidemiology in the simplest way so that everyone can understand it. Meaghan Kall works for the UK health authorities and was unaware of her ability to express herself until her bosses asked her to work on a report and upon completion she decided to report the highlights online socialTwitter.
Since then, she has become the most friendly, accessible and educational face of the British authorities. And part of her daily work changed: her leadership understood the importance of her work and she dedicates herself to tweeting and answering questions on this social network as part of her work. She even has the freedom to say when she doesn't like something about the political response to the pandemic.
“My favorite interactions are people who say 'I really have a lot of faith in public health and epidemiology. I didn't trust her, I didn't understand her, until I started following your work, ”she said in the interview.
Tulio de Oliveira: the variant hunter
South Africa is one of the countries in the world with the highest surveillance for variants of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes covid-19. There, the existence of two variants of concern to science has been confirmed: beta, at the end of 2020, and, more recently, omicron.
There are many people who work in this, but there is a protagonist: Tulio de Oliveira, who was born in Brazil but has lived in South Africa since he was a child.
“The way to act in a pandemic must be for quick action. Waiting and seeing how it behaves is not a good option”, said the biomathematician, who already had previous experience in this type of genetic search with other viruses, such as Ebola.
Finding two variants of concern have made him be seen as the bearer of bad news, but he summarizes: "we are not the enemy, we are the opposite, our news allows the authorities to prepare better."
Friederike Otto: Weather Detective
She is a researcher at the Institute for Climate Change and the Environment in London. Friederike Otto and her team developed a strategy that uses climate simulations with more than 50 models. This approach has been seen as one of the most robust and is used by different institutes around the world.
She works as a detective of extreme phenomena such as heat waves, floods, hurricanes and tornadoes, but also with those phenomena and changes that go unnoticed because they take years to develop.
She indicates that she is not only in this subject of study for professional reasons, her concern as a citizen of the world and the impact for future generations is real. "I am concerned about fighting for justice, and climate change is one of the main threats to justice," she said.
Zhang Rongqiao: explorer of Mars
Zhang Rongqiao is an engineer leading the first Chinese mission to Mars. This Asian country is the second (after the United States) to have a robot on the Red Planet.
The mission has produced only limited scientific data, but the information collected by the robot and the orbiter has been used by more than 20 teams of scientists. One of the most ambitious projects is to search for the region where it is believed that there was the greatest amount of water on said planet.
This has also given impetus to the Chinese mission to the Moon and restored the country's confidence in space exploration and the fruits it can bear.
Victoria Tauli-Corpuz: indigenous defender
Victoria Tauli-Corpuz has spent years speaking with world leaders, governments, environmentalists and philanthropic foundations to fight for the rights of indigenous people to preserve the biodiversity of the places where they live and thus support the fight against climate change.
Since its foundation, it has worked with indigenous communities around the world, helping them understand their rights and recover their lands. She also helps them to have a greater voice before governments and to preserve the ecology of their land.
“It's really about helping indigenous people empower themselves. So we can strengthen their capacity so they can do what they need to do,” she noted.
Jane Woodcock: the drug boss
She is an administrator by profession and for those things of destiny she later studied Medicine. Since the Joe Biden administration began in the United States, Janet Woodcock has been in charge of one of the main regulatory positions at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
She has been working for the agency for 35 years and her previous position was at the Center for Drug Evaluation and Control. With her previous experience, she is now one of the main people giving regulatory recommendations.
During the pandemic, she has played a controversial role by having a leading role in authorizing the emergency use of vaccines, their boosters, and treatments and diagnostic tests, which has given her such a large number of supporters as detractors.