Dr. Nancy Andrews, dean, Duke University School of Medicine, provided the keynote address, “Progress and Promise: Women in Academic Medicine.”

Although increasing numbers of women are entering biomedical research, as they progress beyond the level of assistant professorships they tend to “drop out,” despite being highly successful in obtaining research funding.

In order to discuss and promote effective strategies to sustain career success for women in biomedical research, the NIH working group on women in biomedical careers featured, at a recent workshop, best practices obtained from industry (Ernst and Young, Deloitte and Touche) as well from the military and academic health centers.

NIH director Dr. Elias Zerhouni underscored the seriousness of the issue and emphasized the need to change systems so that career success is obtained not only by women in research but by all women who strive to achieve in science, technology, engineering and math fields.

An NIH panel described the initiatives NIH is undertaking to improve chances for sustained career success for extramural as well as for intramural investigators.

The workshop will be followed by sustained efforts on the part of NIH in partnership with other organizations to publicize best practices and to track career advancement of women entering the biomedical research pipeline.

A videocast of the workshop and the speaker presentations are available at http://womeninscience. nih.gov. You can also learn more about the working group at that site.