Marit Bonne

Residency project

The untold story of the uterus: what we are just beginning to understand

At the Carlos Simon Foundation, one of Europe’s leading women’s health research initiatives, I will be exploring the story of the womb from conception to menopause. Specifically, I want to understand what areas of women’s health have only recently gained scientific interest and what challenges researchers face, communicating this research to the general public in an accessible way.

Testimony

As someone with a uterus, it baffles me how little we still know about this organ that is central to life. This lack of knowledge is not neutral, as it impacts people suffering from infertility and underdiagnosed uterine pathologies, some of which can take 8.6 years to be diagnosed. Therefore, understanding and awareness of uterine mechanisms is required to ensure better, more equitable healthcare. This is something that I’m very passionate about.

I have been working as a science journalist for a year now, focusing on topics ranging from astronomy to engineering to biomedicine. However, I was eager to work on a long-term project where I could fully dive into a topic close to my heart. Therefore, when my internship supervisor told me about the FRONTIERS Residency, I knew I wanted to focus on women’s health.

After this, I searched for different research institutes that related to this topic and when I read about the Carlos Simon Foundation in the FRONTIERS database, my interest was immediately sparked. I reached out to them and we got to know each other during a meeting where they explained their research. During this, the idea of telling the story of the uterus came quite quickly to me and I worked out the details in a project proposal consequently.

During my 4-month project here in Valencia, I aim to deepen my understanding of multidisciplinary biomedical research on the uterus. Here, I will communicate about the research to the general public in an accessible way. My objective is to follow researchers at one of the leading women’s health research initiatives in Europe, the Carlos Simon Foundation (CSF), as they investigate fundamental questions. Specifically, I want to explore the story of the womb: from conception to menopause. What areas have only recently gained interest and what challenges do researchers face? To ensure multidisciplinarity and a broad narrative in my project, I will work with different researchers at CSF that each focus on another chapter of the womb. In addition, I love to give workshops about science communication and hope to give some during my stay here.