Women network differently from men. So, the real business is done at the bar after the conference and if women will say, oh, I'm really tired I think I'll go to bed, that's a bad move. I mean, unless you're truly tired, you should make the effort to at least have one glass of water, whatever you want [because] it is where business is done. And funny thing is, men don't seem to talk about anything substantial under those circumstances, but they'd done a deal somewhere. We have our Academy of Science meetings, Royal Academy of Science in the Netherlands, and we will have a meeting about something substantial and there'll be a dinner afterwards and at least half the people there in the business part are women and maybe only 5% or 10% are at the dinner, and I know they're old enough not to have kids at home waiting for them. We have to play a little bit of the men's game. It doesn't mean to say we have to be men, but we do have to be part of their society unless we're going to have our own.

Dr. Christine Mummery is a professor of developmental biology at Leiden University and head of the Department of Anatomy and Embryology at the Leiden University Medical Center. Her work specializes in stem cell biology, cardiovascular development, and developmental biology.

In 1974, she received her Bachelor of Science degree in physics, electronics, and mathematics from the University of Nottingham, UK and in 1978 received her PhD in biophysics from the University of London, UK for her research at King’s College London. She received a post-doctoral fellowship at the Royal Society, UK from 1978 to 1980, and in 1981 continued her fellowship at the Hubrecht Institute working with carcinoma cells. In 1985, she was appointed to a tenured staff scientist working on developmental biology and differentiation.

In 2011, Dr. Mummery founded the iPSC&OoC Hotel facility in the Leiden University Medical Center. From 2009 to 20019, she was the head of the department of Anatomy and Embryology at Leiden University and guest professor at the University of Twente from 2015 to 2023. She was president of the ISSCR from 2020 to 2021 and is the founding editor of its journal, Stem Cell Reports.

Dr. Mummery has received several awards for her work in developmental biology, including the 2014 Hugo van de Poelgeest Prize for Animal Alternatives, the 2014 Hans Biomendaal Medal for innovative interdisciplinary research, being an elected member of the Academia Europaea in 2015 and Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2010, the 2021 Fondation Lefoulon Delalande-Institut de France prize for cardiovascular physiology, and the ISSCR Public Service Award in 2023.