2019 December 19 the annual meeting of the BASNET Forumas took place in the A435 auditorium of the National Center for Physical and Technological Sciences. It was attended not only by the most active members of the association from Vilnius University (VU) and Kaunas Universities of Technology (KTU), but also, remotely, by representatives of Klaipeda University (KU). Among the invited guests were Agnė Vaitkevičienė, Vice President and Executive Director of the Lithuanian Biotechnology Association (LBTA), and LBTA Board Member Dr. Inga Matijošytė. The meeting was attended by representatives of the administration of all three universities: dr. OlgaRancova, Vice Dean of VU Faculty of Physics (VU FF), Chairwoman of the KTU Equal Opportunities Commission Jekaterina Rymonienė and Dean of KU JTGMF, dr. Rima Mickevičienė, too. The participation of members of administration shows that Lithuanian universities are beginning to understand importance of the gender equality in research.
The meeting started with a traditional annual report on the association’s activities, followed by a short Visus dalyvius asociacija pavaišino tradicine kava. discussion and consideration of the association’s plan for 2020. Chairman of the Board Assoc. Prof. Dr. Sandra Pralgauskaitė presented the Basnet Forumas initiative to develop and implement a gender equality plan at VU Faculty of Physics. She presented the actions planned for that. Representatives of Lithuanian universities participating in EC Horizon 2020 projects shared their best practices in the round table discussion. In the round table discussions took part thee following collegues: Assoc. Prof.Dr. Aurelija Novelskaitė, representing SPEAR project partner VU, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Danguolė Rutkauskienė, representing EQUAL IST project partner KTU and Dr. Viktorija Vaitkevičienė with colleague Dr. Rima Mickevičienė, representing Baltic Gender project partner KU.
President of the Association Assoc. Prof. Dr. Dalia Šatkovskienė presented to the participants the second book, which is planned to be published during the implementation of the ongoing project “On the Boundary of Cognition”. The project aims to raise awareness of the important contribution of women researchers to STEM fields of science. This is a book about M. Curie’s “Marie Curie – women who has outstrip her time” (Marie Curie – “Une femme dans son siècle”).
A traditional coffee was served for all participants by the association.