ENG-Portraits
The decision to study is an important decision for one's own future. Women are often still underrepresented in STEM subjects in particular. TUD therefore aims to inform young women about their study options and motivate them to take up a technical or scientific degree at TUD. Making female role models visible and providing information about future course content as well as practical experience and knowledge about possible areas of application of STEM subjects in "real life" is an important component of this. On this page, we would like to introduce you to interesting STEM women in the form of short portraits.
Can you tell us about your academic background and your research work in engineering?
I studied my greatest passion - desining - and have always been particularly interested in design at the interfaces of technology and society. I research and teach at the interface of design, innovation and social transformation. My focus is on co-creative, systemic and design-oriented innovation processes - often in close collaboration with engineers, architects, urban designers, landscape architects and civil society stakeholders. People are always at the center of everything I do. I am not an engineer in the traditional sense - my perspective is shaped by design and transformation science. After working in the automotive industry and international cooperation, I took the step back to academia to contribute and research the opening towards inter- and transdisciplinary cooperation. However, through numerous inter- and transdisciplinary projects with engineers, architects and stakeholders from administration and society, I have experience in how technological, social and cultural perspectives on change can be productively brought together. The dialogical opening of such systems is a central concern of mine, which means leaving the academic ivory tower and involving new stakeholders.
What are your core research areas?
I research innovation processes that address not only technical, but also social, cultural and ecological dimensions. The central question is how we can use design-oriented methods - especially design and co-creation - to provide systemic support for social transformations. My approach is inter- and transdisciplinary and is located between design research, innovation management, sustainability science and transformation research. I am particularly interested in
- Participatory innovation - how stakeholders and citizens can be involved as co-creators
- Systemic design - to redesign complex contexts in administration, urban development and business
- Design as a leadership and governance tool - especially in public institutions and socio-spatial contexts
I don't see innovation as linear progress, but as the responsible shaping of possible futures - especially where social justice, planetary boundaries and collective learning intertwine.
What projects or research work have you carried out recently?
Before my time at the TUD, I designed an innovation lab for digital administrative modernization in a federal ministry with a focus on impact, participation and learning institutions, and before that I researched and worked on digital transformation in the automotive industry. As part of the deputy professorship at the Chair of Technical Design, I mainly introduced new team structures for collaboration, initiated new collaborations for the chair and taught courses. Now I am looking forward with great curiosity and anticipation to the International Interdisciplinary Autumn School, which I will be holding for the second time in Hoyerswerda, Lausitz at the end of the summer semester together with Prof. Nora Huxmann and Prof. Robert Knippschild - thanks to the generous FOSTER funding, we will be able to develop interdisciplinary projects on open space design for residents in Hoyerswerda within a week and present them to society with an exhibition on site. The focus here is on linking spatial planning, social innovation and design research in structurally weak regions.
What are your professional goals as a professor?
In terms of research, I would like to continue to think and act creatively at the interface between design research and transformation research - although where I am allowed to do this is still open. I would like to create spaces in which new ways of thinking about design, technology and society can emerge - with critical openness, the courage to embrace uncertainty and a clear ethical stance. For the interfaces with engineering, I would like to see a new form of openness and mutual curiosity to connect people and technology more closely. The dominance of technology here makes it challenging to convince colleagues to take new paths - but this is where the potential lies for me: in treading new interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary paths. In the long term, I hope that design beyond methods will be understood - and help us all to work better, more constructively and less competitively, but rather across disciplines
What inspired you to conduct research in this field and ultimately pursue a career as an engineer and professor?
I am fascinated by how new futures become conceivable through design. Innovation does not primarily mean technical renewal, but social renewal. My motivation is to open up these resonance spaces. After working in the automotive industry and at the Federal Ministry for International Cooperation, I was once again keen to work on my own issues in the context of design research, to teach an expanded concept of design and to get to know the perspectives and questions of younger generations. The future will show whether my next station will be in research or in practice, or at an interface.
What specific challenges have you overcome on your way to becoming a professor in the School of Engineering Sciences, especially as a woman in an often male-dominated field?
As someone who does not come from a traditional engineering background, it was a challenge to mediate between disciplines and schools of thought and to understand them. This "border-crossing" nature has enabled me to open up new areas of thought and action - especially in cooperation with architects, urban planners and designers. In fact, I got to know a very male-dominated environment here in engineering research, both in the direct number of women who are visible in the field of engineering and in the male-dominated work culture, which often shows great differences and approaches, especially in the area of communication - more clearly than in the practice from which I came. There is still a lot of work to be done, so it is all the more important not to scare away the few female representatives, but to see them as a positive contribution to diversity and inclusion in order to improve research results.
How do you see the future of engineering in terms of innovation and social progress, particularly with regard to the challenges of climate change and sustainable development?
The challenges of our time require a change of perspective. I would like to see the engineering sciences become more open to the social, creative and cultural dimensions of innovation. As challenging as interdisciplinary collaboration is, I firmly believe that it is necessary in order to shape real transformation.
Even as a child, when I was in the garden with my parents, I always looked at the trees, houses and stones and wondered what things were made of. I imagined that there was an element of wood, an element of stone, an element of grass ... and thought about what makes up these elements and what distinguishes them, why some things are hard and some things are soft, some dark and some light. I no longer know what answers I found for myself to these questions.
When I was taught about the periodic table at school, I was completely fascinated by the fact that the entire variety of things around me consisted of a manageable number of different elements that only differed in their number of electrons, neutrons and protons. With the youthful motivation to make nuclear energy safe and thus the world a better place, I started studying physics straight after school. Unfortunately, it didn't take long for reality to catch up with me and show me that theoretical electrodynamics and other subjects were somehow very far removed from what I actually wanted to do. Fortunately, I had already been working as a Research Assistant at Fraunhofer on the side. Compared to most of the content from my lectures, I found it super exciting what the scientists there were working on all day. It was about real, everyday problems and their technical solutions. I asked around in passing what my colleagues had all studied: In addition to Chemistry and Physics, many of them came from Material Science. I'm certainly not the only one who had never heard of "Material Science" until my early twenties, so I started to find out about it. Aha, so it's like mechanical engineering, but with a focus on the materials and substances used, sounds exciting. It took a while before I was able to admit to myself that I had really made a mistake in my choice of study. After four semesters of physics, I started all over again in materials science at TU Dresden. After the more general foundation course, the really exciting special lectures began in the main course. I met incredibly nice fellow students, specialized in functional materials and haven't regretted it for a single day.
What we learned during our studies went far beyond what we learned at school: what metals, ceramics and polymers are actually made of and how they are structured internally in order to have exactly the properties that we use them for in a targeted manner in all kinds of applications. Today, I am a Research Associate at the Institute of Materials Science and work on the interaction of material surfaces with their environment. Even though I have been working with materials for so long now, they have lost none of their fascination. On the contrary, I have developed an even greater curiosity about all the things I don't yet know.
How does an airplane or a steam turbine work? What role do materials, the design and the manufacturing processes of the components play? What is actually behind it all when I travel from A to B by car or train or fly by plane? These are all questions that I kept asking myself and that I wanted to understand for myself. Initially, I studied mechanical engineering, where a lot of mathematics, physics, mechanics and electrical engineering laid the foundation for a later specialization. The lightweight construction course then offered me the greatest variety and also the most interesting topics that could satisfy my thirst for knowledge. The core topics of lightweight construction are not only light and strong materials, but also the determination and calculation of their properties, the design of components and systems depending on their external load and simulation as a means of designing components and predicting critical states. Other topics, such as electromobility or artificial intelligence, are also included, which pose an infinite variety of questions and solution strategies. The mixture of classic technical tasks combined with new approaches, such as the integration of sensors and actuators in critical components to record their status, is always interesting and motivating for me.
Due to the variety of topics I deal with on a daily basis, I have learned a lot in both my professional and everyday life and can now derive the answers to my everyday questions based on the knowledge I have acquired.
With a penchant for math and physics, I euphorically began studying mechanical engineering in Berlin. I made this choice mainly because of the countless opportunities to specialize in mechanical engineering. The plan worked out: A few semesters later, I found out about Technical Design at TU Dresden, where the constructive development process and creative industrial design meet. Here, we consider the needs of society right through to the user before coming up with a concrete product concept. In my diploma thesis, I worked with refugees in Dresden to develop simple solutions on site. I am now working on my doctorate at the Chair of Industrial Design Engineering at TU Dresden and researching how industrial design can help create a dialog between current science and society. Specifically, this involves the "Tactile Internet", which will enable many new applications for people in the future. Developing these technologies responsibly and in dialog with society is central to the Cluster of Excellence CeTI (ceti.one).
My enthusiasm for space dates back to my early childhood. It all started when I went to elementary school in the USA and went on several trips from school to various museums about astronomy and space travel. I also lived near the NASA Langley Research Center in Virginia for part of the time and even then I just loved the idea of how you can take people into space and how many things we still don't know and understand about our universe.
A few years later, I returned to my home country, Panama. Unfortunately, there is still no space agency there, but that was no obstacle for me. At some point in the 11th grade, I started researching which degree programs were best suited to my dream of working with astronauts. During my research, I came across the aerospace engineering course and it appealed to me. In the end, the affordability and quality of studying in Germany made me decide to study here.
I immigrated to Germany straight after my Panamanian Abitur, studied the language intensively for six months and attended a preparatory college for a year to gain credit for my Panamanian Abitur. Only then was I able to start my studies at TU Dresden. I came across TU Dresden when I was researching the best universities in Germany for aerospace engineering. In the end, I chose it because no pre-study internship was mandatory to apply. I also heard that graduate engineers are particularly well regarded in Germany.
I am now studying for a degree in mechanical engineering with a specialization in aerospace engineering. In the foundation course, i.e. the first 4 semesters, we have mechanical engineering as the basis. From the 5th semester onwards, you start the main course of study and that's where I chose to specialize in aerospace engineering. The fact that the course consists of mechanical engineering and aerospace engineering means that I have a wide range of career options after graduation. With my degree, I'm not just limited to aerospace engineering, I can also go into many other engineering fields, and I recommend the course if you're curious and want to understand things. However, you also need to be aware that it won't always be easy or straightforward. But with the right motivation, you can do it! I'm also pleased to see more and more women taking on this course and engineering careers.
My goal is to one day work with astronauts at ESA and be part of the team of scientists and engineers involved in advancing new and innovative technologies and space exploration. I am confident that my studies at TU Dresden are the first step towards fulfilling this goal.
Actually, I did not expect myself coming out of all the stereotypes existing in my society. From a girl who was not allowed to take her own decisions to a person who is now here in Germany, it feels more like a dream! I come from southern part of India. With the love for Mathematics and problem-solving, I completed Bachelors degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from India and then worked as Graduate Apprentice at Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) for an year. It was the turning point in my life, which paved my door to Germany. The frequent conversations with ISRO scientist on the ongoing miniaturization in the microelectronics industry and the knowledge they shared about the vast opportunities in Semiconductor Industry helped me explore a new field in Nanotechnology. I was at first not much confident to take this stream but now I think it is the strongest decision I made in my life. Now as a Masters degree student in Nanoelectronic Systems at TU Dresden, it is very fascinating to learn about different nanomaterials like quantum wells, quantum dots, nanowires, etc. and their diverse practical applications. Moreover, the lab sessions with practical programming tasks to deal the problems in the field of Computer science helps in gaining skills in programming.
I have always enjoyed being creative in the kitchen. Chocolates, cakes, bread and yoghurt - homemade not only tastes better, but I've always enjoyed creating them myself. But I wanted more. To know more, for example how filled chocolates, which take me hours to make, can be produced thousands of times an hour. To understand more about why milk is liquid but yoghurt is solid. But do I want to be involved with food for the rest of my life or is this just a phase? I wasn't so sure after my A-levels. The TU Dresden offers a very flexible degree program in Process Engineering and Natural Materials Technology. During the first four semesters, you have time to study general engineering subjects and get a taste of a wide range of subjects, such as biotechnology, wood and fiber technology or food technology, before deciding on one of these subjects. I am very happy with my choice to continue working with food. The Institute of Food Technology not only teaches basic processes, but also what lies behind the processes. Of course, practical experience plays a major role. Many excursions, internships and tastings made learning easier. Current research is not neglected either. Above all, the holistic use and thus conservation of resources and the development of new uses for food is an important topic.
The reason why I chose mechanical engineering after leaving school? I enjoyed mathematics and was very interested in technology. That sounds very crude, but in summary it hits the nail on the head. I'm now halfway through my degree. My basic studies are over. And I can build on the basics, such as mathematics, technical mechanics, design theory, electrical engineering and much more. But there was one subject that was groundbreaking for me that wasn't on the list. Production engineering. The subject really fascinated me and was the deciding factor for me to major in production engineering. What fascinates me about production engineering is the holistic view of a product's life cycle. What parameters need to be taken into account when designing and selecting manufacturing processes? How are the parts manufactured? Which machines can be used to implement production? How long do the individual production steps take? Which parts does a company manufacture itself and which are purchased? Questions upon questions to which I look forward to finding answers in production engineering.