Science & Career Talks

The University is dedicated to promoting equality and equal opportunities for all genders.
With the Science & Career Talks series, the University is intensifying its gender equality activities as part of the Excellence Strategy by inviting experienced and successful female scientists to Tübingen. They present their research in a public talk and provide insights into their discipline-specific individual experiences in a workshop, thus offering early-career researchers at the University of Tübingen the opportunity to meet senior scientists as role models and to become inspired by their work and career.

Program 2025

July

Prof. Dr. Uschi Backes-Gellner

Business and Personnel Economics, University of Zurich

Uschi Backes-Gellner is Professor for Business and Personnel Economics at the University of Zurich (Switzerland) and Co-Director of the Swiss Leading House on the Economics of Education, Firm Behaviour and Training Policies. From 2008 to 2024 she was also Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Business, Economics and Informatics of the University of Zurich.
She has served in national and international advisory committees such as the Foundation Committee for the German Transfer Agency (DATI) and the Council for the World of Work of the German Federal Government. She was also member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina on „Ageing Societies and the World of Work“ and of the National Research Council of the Swiss National Science Foundation.
Her research focuses on Personnel, Education and Innovation Economics, and in particular on the Economics of Vocational and Professional Education and Training.

Public Lecture

Explaining as well as Countering Gendered Occupational Choices and Why They Matter: Empirical Evidence on Labor Market and Innovation Outcome

Wednesday, 2 July 2025 at 2:15 pm
room E02
Mohlstr. 36 | Universität Tübingen

Workshop

Lunch & Learn: Women in Scientific Careers

Thursday, 3 July 2025 from 11:30 am to 2:30 pm

Sitzungsraum
Nauklerstr. 47 | Universität Tübingen

registration until July 1st

more about the lecture

Social gender norms strongly shape occupational choices and contribute to the persistent gender segregation in education and employment. Using regional variation in norms, we show that stronger traditional norms significantly reduce women’s participation in STEM fields. Brief counter-stereotypical interventions can partially offset these effects - at least for women. The resulting underrepresentation of women in STEM substantially lowers the number of female inventors and diminishes the overall innovation output. Regions with more women in STEM show higher patenting activity, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Structural modeling reveals that social gender norms not only affect patenting directly, but also indirectly - via their influence on women’s occupational choices. This indirect effect is statistically significant and highly policy-relevant, since occupational choices are more amenable to intervention than longstanding social norms. Promoting gender-atypical career choices thus matters not only for equity, but also for innovation and economic performance.

more about the workshop

This informal lunch & learn workshop offers early-career researchers in economics and business a chance to engage in an open exchange with an experienced academic. The workshop will focus on women’s career development, navigating academic and alternative career paths, and lessons learned along the way. Participants are encouraged to ask questions and share their own experiences. The goal is to foster dialogue, reflection, peer exchange and mutual support in an informal setting.

In the current political context, it is important to emphasize that gender equality contributes directly to scientific excellence. It increases the diversity of perspectives and thus the quality of research and the range of innovation outcomes. Gender equality is therefore in the best scientific interest.

Uschi Backes-Gellner

Dr. Maria-Jose (Pepa) Martinez-Perez

Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), Institute of Nanoscience and Materials of Aragon (INMA)

Pepa Martínez-Pérez is scientist at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), based at the Institute of Nanoscience and Materials of Aragon (INMA). After earning her PhD, she spent six years as a postdoctoral researcher at leading European institutions, including NEST in Pisa and the University of Tübingen. She is Humboldt Fellow, Leonardo Fellow, and ERC grantee. Her research explores the intersection of superconductivity and magnetism, with a strong focus on their applications in quantum technologies.

Beyond the lab, Martínez-Pérez is actively involved in science outreach and community service. She sits on the board of the Condensed Matter Physics Division of the Spanish Royal Physics Society, is a member of the editorial board of Revista Española de Física, and contributes to the CSIC’s quantum technologies platform, QTEP+. Her scientific achievements have been recognized with several awards, including the Physics Research Award from the Royal Academy of Sciences of Zaragoza (2021) and the Young Experimental Physicist Award (RSEF-BBVA, 2020).

Public Lecture

Van der Waals magnonic cavities

Tuesday, 22 July 2025 at 1:00 pm
room D4A19, D-Bau
Auf der Morgenstelle 14 | Universität Tübingen

Registration is not required.

Workshop

In Search of Female Role Models

Wednesday, 23 July 2025 from 2:15 to 5:15 pm
Sitzungsraum
Nauklerstr. 47 | Universität Tübingen
Registration starting July 5th

more about the lecture

Superconducting resonators are essential to solid-state quantum technologies, enabling key functions like qubit readout and signal amplification. Coplanar LC resonators, in particular, offer strong qubit-photon coupling due to their low losses and compact size. However, their size cannot be scaled down to the nanoscale, limiting the ability to reach stronger coupling regimes needed for studying new physics and advancing spin qubit applications. Achieving such strong coupling with current superconducting circuits remains nearly out of reach today.

In this talk, I introduce VdW-QED - a radically new platform that leverages magnonic resonators made from van der Waals (vdW) antiferromagnetic insulators for cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED) experiments with spin qubits. I will demonstrate our first key achievement: the experimental observation of strong magnon-spin coupling between CrSBr, which serves as the magnonic cavity, and GdW10, which forms the solid-state spin ensemble. By detecting an anticrossing and identifying signatures of dark states, we quantitatively confirm that the coupling is coherent and exhibits well-defined symmetries. These findings open the door to using CrSBr and similar layered materials as magnonic cavities in hybrid quantum systems, offering exciting prospects for both fundamental physics and applied device research.

more about the workshop

It is quite common to explain the low percentage of female students in STEM fields by pointing to the lack of female role models. In this workshop, I will show you that female role models have always been there. Although many of them did not have the opportunity to pursue careers in science, they inspired us through their passion for activities that were often considered just hobbies - but were they really just hobbies?

September

Prof. Dr. Vlasta Sikimić

Philosophy & Ethics Group, Eindhoven University of Technology
Field: Philosophy of Science

Vlasta Sikimić is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy of Science and a member of the Philosophy & Ethics group at Eindhoven University of Technology.
Vlasta Sikimić worked both on formal and empirically driven philosophy. She finished her PhD on optimization of scientific reasoning in Belgrade in 2019. During that time, she was also a member of the Laboratory for Experimental Psychology (University of Belgrade).
She lived and worked in several countries (Serbia, Netherlands, Austria, and Germany) which shaped her academic profile. Most recently, she worked at the University of Tübingen where she was a member of the Cluster of Excellence “Machine Learning: New Perspectives for Science” and the Hector Research Institute of Education Sciences and Psychology.
Her research focus is on Social Epistemology of Science, Metascience, Philosophy of AI in Science and Philosophy of AI in Education. More precisely her research is concerned with the question of how to improve learning in science and education in group and hybrid (human-machine) settings.
She is active in policy advising and engaged in providing community service. For instance, she is a member of the Steering Committee of the European Philosophy of Science Association and of the East European Network for Philosophy of Science.

Public Lecture

Education in the Era of AI: Creating Fair and Secure Learning Spaces

Seminarraum
Doblerstraße 33 | Universität Tübingen

Registration is not required.

Workshop

Building inclusive science: be the driver of change

Seminarraum
Doblerstraße 33 | Universität Tübingen

Registration

more about the lecture

AI has the potential to make education better and support lifelong learning. It can design personalized study plans and take the needs of individual students into account. However, to ensure fairness and equality in education, it is important to make sure that the knowledge used to train the algorithm is accurate and well-represented. At the same time, we must ensure that all students, especially disadvantaged ones, have fair access to technology and learning tools.
The main goal of education is to help students grow into informed and responsible global citizens. This makes it even more important to use AI in a way that promotes fairness and inclusivity. In this talk, I will explore how AI can be used in education to create opportunities for all students and support their success, both academically and in understanding the world.

more about the workshop

Science is shaped by both knowledge-based values and non-knowledge values. Non-knowledge values include political and economic views. Ideally, science should avoid being overly influenced by political views or similar factors. At the same time, ethical values are essential for scientific work.
In this workshop we will start by exploring how different values affect science. Then, we will focus on values that help grow global scientific knowledge, like diversity. When we include diverse ideas and methods, we can solve problems in creative ways that go beyond the usual approaches. But to fully benefit from diversity, we need to find the right ways to bring in different skills and expertise. Hence, together we will discuss how group structure and diversity levels impact creativity and problem-solving in science.
In the second half, we will discuss how to create more inclusive research environments. You will think about examples of important work by underrepresented scientists and reflect on your own experiences with academic culture. Together, we will create a plan for making science more inclusive and supportive for everyone and discuss how you can help supporting this.

The change of the academic culture is crucial for achieving gender balance in science. The culture should shift and become more inclusive of all gender identities. This will in turn lead to empowerment of underpriviledged groups beyond academia and positively affect society.

Vlasta Sikimić