Gonca Sariaydin was the Equality Officer of ELEMENTS from January until September 2022. Before joining ELEMENTS, she worked in projects of different ministries focusing on anti-discrimination, anti-racism, and equality. Since 2017 she is specialized in anti-discrimination work in universities. In October 2022, she accepted a permanent position as Antidiscrimination Officer at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz.
Sigrid Rand was the first Administrative Director of ELEMENTS until she joined the Hessian Ministry of Social Affairs and Integration in July 2022. There, she acts as the Deputy Head of the Managing Authority of the European Social Fund (ESF). Through the ESF, the European Union (EU) provides funding that the national/federal governments of its Member States invest in people, improving their skills and creating new employment opportunities. By doing so, the EU aims at achieving a more social and inclusive Europe. As the challenges in the field of education and skills development, employment as well as social inclusion differ greatly at national and sub-national level, each EU Member State defines its own priorities. In the Federal State of Hesse, the ESF+ measures for 2021-2027 focus on securing skilled labour and actively including disadvantaged groups in the labour market. To this end, it receives 169 million Euros from ESF+ funds, matched by 254 million Euros from national sources. In particular, Sigrid is responsible for the financial forecasting, monitoring and reporting in ESF+. Furthermore, she ensures the compliance of the ESF+ programme with the laws, regulations and guidelines of the EU, the Federal Government of Germany and the Federal State of Hesse. In addition, Sigrid accompanies the implementation of the REACT-EU programme, which provides the Federal State of Hesse with additional 54 million Euros in 2022 for addressing the economic and social impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Sigrid wishes ELEMENTS all the success in achieving its scientific goals!
Dr. Martha Liliana Cortes Sua was an ELEMENTS member from April 2021 to June 2022. Cortes Sua went on to become a member of the Radioactive Isotope Physics Laboratory under the direction of Prof. H. Sakurai at RIKEN in Wakō, Japan. She is involved in nuclear structure research of radioactive isotopes using in-beam gamma ray spectroscopy. In particular, Cortes Sua focuses on the structure of proton-rich isotopes towards the doubly-magic 100Sn. In parallel, she continues to be involved in the development of a new detector array based on new scintillating materials.
“During my time with ELEMENTS I worked on the design of a new setup to study the coupling between giant resonances and fission decay in actinides by employing electron-induced fission. This studies, which are performed within Working Area 3, will help us constrain the models on the r-process nucleosynthesis. I got to expand my knowledge on nuclear astrophysics and the importance of nuclear structure on the calculations of different astrophysics scenarios. It also helped me boost my academic network and to get to know, and work with, scientist from different fields. This promoted new collaborations which are still ongoing and new projects which can be performed at RIKEN with collaboration of members of ELEMENTS.”