zdi-Girls-Camp: Pupils develop practical approaches to support girls in the STEM field

From left to right: District Administrator Frank Rock, Mayor Susanna Stupp, Minister Ina Brandes, student Lena Engel, chemical laboratory assistant Pia Münstermann and zdi coordinator Axel Tillmanns

How can we get girls excited about STEM? What wishes, requirements and ideas does the target group itself have? And why are some sciences more popular with girls than others? The first zdi girls' camp in Frechen on October 28 revolved around these and other questions.

Interview: process engineer Dr'in Nina Woicke on bio-based plastics

Nina Woicke is a process engineering engineer and freelance consultant and product developer. She is passionate about very special plastics and their practical applications. Which plastics are involved, why plastic per se is not "evil" and how Nina Woicke came to study engineering - she spoke to Sandra Fleckenstein about this in the #ResearchersFriday podcast.

Topic dossier | Women and the Nobel Prize

Lise Meitner in conversation.

57 out of 934 – that’s how many (or few) women have been honored with a Nobel Prize in the past 120 years. A shockingly low rate. A change seems to be on the way this year: a total of three women were honored with the highest scientific award. A reason to take a closer look at the role of women in science. Fortunately, the times when women were not allowed to study are long gone - in Germany for about 110 years. Today, in most countries, about the same number of women and men study. Nevertheless, more men are active in university or non-university research. And the scientific community is still dominated by men. Studies also show that more women than men leave the scientific community from one scientific career level to the next. According to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, the global proportion of women is in the...