Getting girls and women interested in research - with this Brigitte Bach and Manfred Tscheligi in his role as Gender Equality Officer welcomed the female visitors. Brigitte Bach also talked about her own career: back then, there were only four women studying physics. The fact is that there are still far too few women on STEM degree programs, although the labour market offers the best job opportunities and there are also all doors open to female STEM researchers in research, said Bach.
Manfred Tscheligi emphasised that variety and diversity are essential, especially in research, in order to achieve adequate results. The aim of the event, which took place as part of the SHE goes DIGITAL initiative, was to show girls how to access research and use role models to demonstrate that STEM research is exciting and fun. A task that was accomplished brilliantly by the seven female researchers involved.
In the presentation by Martina Rasch and Viktoria Fochta (Center for Digital Safety & Security), the visitors were able to gain their first impressions of everyday research at AIT. The two researchers also spoke very personally about their own career paths, about the great moments, but also the hurdles.
Fani Kostourou and Victoria Sandor (Center for Energy) presented the City Intelligence Lab and how modern urban planning of the future works and what is currently being researched in this area. They also gave an impressive demonstration of various simulation options, using the example of the lakeside town of Aspern.
Petra Thanner and Katharina Ölsböck (Center for Vision Automation and Control) were on hand in the Machine Vision Lab to provide a comprehensive overview of current research activities in robotics and autonomous vehicles, process optimisation and quality control in industrial projects, as well as surface inspection using a wide range of optical methods: The participants were particularly impressed by the large demo machine for inspecting banknotes.
Christiane Groher (Center for Transport Technologies) presented various aspects of current battery research in the Battery Lab. The visitors found it fun to put on a white lab coat and safety goggles themselves. It was a great day for everyone involved. The event was organised by the Gender Office of Christine Wahlmüller-Schiller, Marie-Theres Raberger and Bettina Brunnader.
We sent out the following press release on the AIT Open LAB DAY today:
https://www.ait.ac.at/fileadmin/cmc/downloads/PAs/2024/20240223pressetext-OpenLabDay_FINAL_englisch.pdf
