Silvina Martha Ponce Dawson is an Argentine physicist specialized in

biophysics Biophysics is an interdisciplinary science that applies approaches and methods traditionally used in physics to study biological phenomena. Biophysics covers all scales of biological organization, from molecular to organismic and populations ...

and a full professor at the

Faculty of Exact and Natural Sciences The Faculty of Exact and Natural Sciences (''Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales''; FCEN), commonly and informally known as Exactas, is the natural science school of the University of Buenos Aires, the largest university in Argentina. It oc ...

of the

University of Buenos Aires The University of Buenos Aires (, UBA) is a public university, public research university in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It is the second-oldest university in the country, and the largest university of the country by enrollment. Established in 1821 ...

(UBA), and senior researcher at the National Scientific Research Council (

CONICET The National Scientific and Technical Research Council (, CONICET) is an Argentine government agency which directs and co-ordinates most of the scientific and technical research done in universities and institutes. History The National Scient ...

). In October 2024 she was elected to preside the

International Union of Pure and Applied Physics The International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP; ) is an international non-governmental organization whose mission is to assist in the worldwide development of physics, to foster international cooperation in physics, and to help in the ...

(IUPAP) for the period 2025 to 2027. Her main research interests are biological and statistical physics. She is the author of more than 100 articles that have appeared in scientific journals and conference proceedings.

Research career

Silvina Ponce Dawson received the

Licenciatura A licentiate (abbreviated Lic.) is an academic degree present in many countries, representing different educational levels. The Licentiate (Pontifical Degree) is a post graduate degree when issued by pontifical universities and other universit ...

and Ph.D. degrees in physics from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1983 and 1988, respectively. She was a research assistant with the

University of Maryland The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland, United States. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the Univ ...

from 1989 to 1991 and at the

Los Alamos National Laboratory Los Alamos National Laboratory (often shortened as Los Alamos and LANL) is one of the sixteen research and development Laboratory, laboratories of the United States Department of Energy National Laboratories, United States Department of Energy ...

from 1991 to 1994. Ponce Dawson returned to the University of Buenos Aires in 1994 as an assistant professor, where she became full professor in 2017. Ponce Dawson is a research associate of the

International Center for Theoretical Physics The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) is a research center for physical and mathematical sciences, located in Trieste, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Italy. The center operates under a tripartite agreement between the Ita ...

(ICTP) in Trieste, Italy, and an associate member of ICTP-SAIFR, Sao Paulo, Brazil. She is divisional associate editor of Physical Review Letters, and she was a member of the Advisory Council of the National Program for Gender Equality of the Ministry of Science of Argentina (comité asesor del Programa de Igualdad de Género del Ministerio de Ciencia de Argentina). She was director of the Faculty of Physics of the UBA from 2005 to 2009 and in charge of extension activities in the period between 2010 and 2016.

International engagement

In October 2017, she was elected IUPAP vice-president at large, designate president in 2021, and finally president in 2024 for the period 2025 to 2027. Ponce Dawson was chair of the IUPAP Working Group on Women in Physics from 2011 to 2014, and the IUPAP gender champion from 2017 to 2019. She was member of the Executive Committee of the

ICSU The International Council for Science (ICSU, after its former name, International Council of Scientific Unions) was an international non-governmental organization devoted to multilateralism, international cooperation in the advancement of scie ...

-funded Gender Gap in Science Project. Ponce Dawson is a member of the steering committee for the 2025 International Year of Quantum Science and Technology.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ponce Dawson, Silvina Living people Presidents of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics Argentine women physicists Academic staff of the University of Buenos Aires