But the election of a female head at Ireland’s oldest and most prestigious university due to be picked from an all-female short list of three senior scholars on April 7 will be the most momentous female appointment so far.
“We’ve seen a very significant transformation with the appointment of three female leaders in the past year, but we need to keep pushing for further improvements across the sector,” said Orla Feely, vice president for research at University College Dublin, who has backed the recently announced Science Foundation Ireland strategy that would seek to ensure that 35 percent of annual principal investigator grants go to women.