Imaging of Matter
dynaMENT starts eighth round
20 September 2023
The dynaMENT mentoring program for women in natural sciences has started its eighth round at a festive event. While the participants of the previous cohort were bid farewell, 24 new mentees are starting in the program.
About 60 mentors, mentees, alumni and invited guests said goodbye to the current cohort of the program and welcomed the 15 new Doctorate Mentees and nine new Advanced Mentees at the event held in the HARBOR building on the Bahrenfeld campus.
The patrons of the mentoring format, Dr. Angelika Paschke-Kratzin, Equal Opportunity Commissioner at Universität Hamburg, and Meike Johannsen, Administrative Director of the DESY research center, emphasized in their welcoming remarks that a career in science is also a journey in which dynaMENT can be seen as a resource and a home port. They appealed to the new mentees to use these fantastic resources for themselves and to be proud of themselves for making it through the competitive selection process.
The Dean of the MIN Faculty, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Norbert Ritter, emphasized the importance of cooperation and diversity as indispensable conditions for excellent science. "The overall goal is to promote female talent in science and to create a more diverse and inclusive academic world. The underrepresentation of women at the top is not only an equal opportunity issue, but also represents an unnecessary loss of talent and expertise in research and teaching." dynaMENT, he said, is making a significant contribution to effecting change.
In her speech, one mentee reported that today, many women starting their careers in STEM fields still have to quickly get used to being surrounded primarily by men. "It's your status quo. At least for me, dynaMENT's mentoring program was the first time I had the opportunity to experience spaces filled with amazing female talent, which must have been the status quo for many men for a long time. How strange that I had to turn 26 to experience this for the first time. How different might our experiences be if there were more gender balance in science? The dynaMENT program showed me what could be and illuminated the many problems that still exist in science and how much better it could be."
The program was accompanied musically by Ryan De Rama, and there was an opportunity for conversation and networking at a barbecue afterwards. This year the mentoring program received a record number of applicants with 46 (21 Doctorate, 25 Advanced) submissions, and workshops for the new mentees will start in October.
Text: MIN faculty, ed.
About dynaMENT
The dynaMENT mentoring program is a cooperation of DESY and the MIN faculty of Universität Hamburg, funded by the two Clusters of Excellence "CUI: Advanced Imaging of Matter" and "Quantum Universe". dynaMENT is intended to accompany female PhD students as well as junior professors, (junior) group leaders and postdocs of the partner institutions in an important phase of their career development and contributes to increasing the share of women in leadership positions in the natural sciences.