L’Oreal USA felicitated five post doctoral female scientists and awarded them the 2012 L'Oreal USA Fellowships for Women in Science.

The award ceremony was held at the The Morgan Library and Museum in New York City. The honorary guests included Ambassador of France to the United States Francois Delattre and City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn. The ceremony was also attended by members of various universities, colleges and high schools in New York.

The fellowship is awarded for exceptional dedication to the advancement and achievement of science, technology, engineering and math to the most promising post-doctoral female scientists across the country.

“I am delighted to honor these women today,” said Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn. “Beyond what these women do in their daily work, they are actually achieving something much larger: they are showing the world that women can excel in anything they want to do. I thank them for their commitment to the sciences and on issues that have the potential to affect the lives of us all. They truly are role models, especially for younger people, and an inspiration to us all to be the best at what we do,” she added.

Through this program, each Fellow will receive up to $60000 to continue their research. Also the L'Oreal USA Fellowships For Women in Science supports the Fellows by providing development workshops, which help these women to network with accomplished female leaders in the field of academic, governmental, scientific and the corporate world. This program is assisted by The American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The national awards program was created in 2003 and it supports the progression of women in sciences. This year fellows are working on breakthrough scientific research that addresses critical issues across the globe. These researches are expected to aid millions globally.

A company that believes in beauty, innovation and scientific excellence, L’Oreal USA in collaboration with UNESCO formed L'Oreal–UNESCO For Women in Science program, and has supported and felicitated 67 Laureates, two of whom were awarded the Nobel Prize in 2009.

The 2012 Fellows are:

Christina Agapakis, a synthetic biologist from the University of California, is working towards engineering new relationships between microorganisms that usually not found in nature.

Jaclyn Winter, also from University of California, is a biochemist researching chemical diversity of biologically active natural products.

Joanna Lynne Kelley from Stanford University is working in biological diversity and characterizing specific pathways that underlie adaptive change.

Lilian Childress is working in quantum optics, the interactions between quantum states of light and mechanical motion. Childress is a Physicist from Yale University.

Erin Marie Williams from The George Washington University is working to understand human anatomy by looking at the tools of early ancestors.