The CIMTT Center of Production Engineering and Management hosted a SummerSchool this year, which was financed by equal opportunities funds from the School of Engineering Sciences. Under the motto "Together for social innovation - interdisciplinary thinking, shaping the future!", a varied program awaited students from various degree programs. The three-day workshop focused on the joint development of concepts for solving social challenges. In their interdisciplinary groups, the participants were challenged to creatively implement their own ideas and directly apply what they had previously learned. Advisors from various TU Dresden departments and companies provided the necessary theory on business model development, creative techniques, project management and social innovation. The golden finale of the workshop was a pitch event where the ideas were presented to an audience. Three experts from futureSAX - Innovation Platform of the Free State of Saxony, SINN - The Future Platform for Social Innovations in Saxony and CIMTT were on hand to support the jury in pursuing the ideas.

© Katharina Hunger, CIMTT

Get-together and brainstorming: Day 1 focused on getting to know each other. Initial theoretical knowledge was imparted and the groups were prepared for the practical work. The groups were assigned by the organizer to ensure a mix of degree programs. In the afternoon, the first innovative ideas were generated in a creative session. Day 1 ended with a picnic together in the countryside to continue the exchange of ideas in a relaxed environment.

© Katharina Hunger, CIMTT

Finding entrepreneurial solutions: On day 2, after a morning workshop with the fictitious example of the "Social Book Club", the participants worked on business model development, stakeholder analysis and SWOT analysis. The knowledge imparted was to be applied in a targeted manner in the groups to their own innovative idea.

© Katharina Hunger, CIMTT

Pitch training and presentation: On the last day of the workshop, after a teaching block, the participants worked intensively on the further development and presentation of their ideas. The aim of the day was to prepare a pitch deck to convince the audience of the business idea in the evening.

Feedback

The idea behind the social innovation workshop was to inspire School of Engineering Sciences students for innovative ideas and interdisciplinary development processes. Focus group discussions with the participants showed that collaboration and the common goal of wanting to change things in particular creates motivation to work on innovative ideas. Feedback on the Summer School was overwhelmingly positive. The participants stated that they had learned a lot, particularly in the areas of social innovation, analytical and creative methods and interdisciplinary collaboration. The "non-judgmental atmosphere for exchange" and the "different lecture topics" were rated as particularly successful and useful. However, it was not important to the participants that the summer school was primarily aimed at women. Nevertheless, the high number of female participants suggests that women felt particularly addressed. The positive feedback on "valuing one's own opinion" indicates that the participants felt they were able to provide valuable input. A more comprehensive evaluation of the course evaluation and the focus group discussions will be prepared in publications by the end of the year.

© Katharina Hunger, CIMTT

Participants: 9 (f 8, m 1)

Organization: Katharina Hunger, CIMTT Center of Production Engineering and Management, with the assistance of Michelle Anger (SHK) and various internal and external TUD Advisors

...as a cooperation of the Schools of BU and ING and the AG Promovierendenrat of the student council (StuRa) of the TU Dresden

© Maren Weissig

The 9th "International Day of Women and Girls in Science" celebrated by the United Nations worldwide on February 11, this year with the title "Women in Science Leading: A New Era for Sustainability", was also performed as a day of action at TU Dresden on February 10, 2024. The Equal Opportunities Officers of the Schools of Engineering Sciences and Civil and Environmental Engineering organized a networking event in cooperation with the AG Promovierendenrat of the student council (StuRa) of TU Dresden to honor the achievements of women in science and society and make them more visible. Numerous guests and speakers contributed to the success of the event with informative presentations, questions and discussions. The interesting insights into the various projects presented, provided new perspectives and interfaces on the topic of equality and strengthened networking and visibility. Many projects, associations and initiatives presented themselves at the posters and information stands and provided material for exchange and discussion.

The organization team would like to thank all the participants who took part and gave presentations for ITFMW action day on a Saturday:

Programm

Stand/ poster presentations/ snacks/ networking section

• Three examples of women with historical doctorates at the TU Dresden, Vivian Weidner, M.A. TU Dresden

• Doctorate - a triad between research, practice and feeding back into teaching - Part I: The obstacles, Dipl.-Ing. Maren Weissig

• dib – German Association of Women Engineers, Jana Hammermueller
• FUN – Women's environmental network, Sophia Weise
• connectING – Stammtisch for students and staff in the School ING, Gritt Ott
• NExT – Forum Postdocs Schools of BU & ING, Nele Kaiser
• Sachsen Technikum, Charlotte Seidel (central Koordinator)

• Cutting the ITFMW 2024 birthday cake

Organizations-Team

Dr.-Ing. Anja Blüher
Nele Kaiser
Franziska Walther
Maren Weissig

Impressions of the event

After almost 2 years of SPRING 2022, our first online summer school Python for female engineers, both the entire conference proceedings with the exercises of the beginner and advanced parts and a field report on the organization and implementation for potential imitators, as well as the contributions of the symposium with their own DOIs are now published on Qucosa.

The complete volume can be found at https://doi.org/10.25368/2024.21, with links to the individual papers at the bottom of the page:

• Automated measurement data evaluation on the engine test bench in Python: https://doi.org/10.25368/2024.22
• Opto-Mechatronic Screening Module for 3D Tumor Model Engineering: https://doi.org/10.25368/2024.23
• Python in control and automation technology: https://doi.org/10.25368/2024.24
• Living with Python: https://doi.org/10.25368/2024.25

Participants: 64

Review

The second edition of the "Online Summer School Python for Female Engineers" (SPRING) was once again a complete success. Due to the high number of applicants in the previous year, which far exceeded the capacity of the course, this time passing a quiz on the first basics of Python was a prerequisite for participation. This strategy worked very well and the selected participants were highly motivated. Monday morning of the summer school week was all about getting to know each other and networking among the participants. If necessary, the necessary Python basics could be consolidated again in the afternoon together with Dorothea "Piko" Koch and Python and Jupyter Notebook could be installed together.

On the mornings from Tuesday to Thursday, Dr. Carsten Knoll imparted concentrated knowledge on engineering topics where Python can offer new and effective solutions. All participants were then able to apply this knowledge directly to tasks during the guided self-study time as well as during the learning project. During the learning project on Thursday and Friday, small groups of 2-3 participants competed against each other in three levels of difficulty. The solutions, some of which were very creative, were evaluated by peer review and the three best groups were able to present their solutions in the final round on Friday afternoon.

The summer school offered further opportunities for networking. At the networking evening on Wednesday, after a keynote speech by Jule Schneider, Dr. Maroua Taghouti and Dr. Anja Blüher, the opportunities and risks of AI in engineering were discussed from various perspectives. Even after the end of the summer school, there will be a monthly online exchange on questions and challenges of programming with Python. This regular meeting at eye level is very well received by the participants.

Feedback

Once again, the feedback from participants was very positive. Over 90% stated that the course met their expectations. For some advanced participants, the focus was too much on the basics, while some participants found the pace too fast. On average, however, it can be said that both the pace and the level of difficulty were optimal for the majority of participants and that they were all able to gain new insights from the summer school.

The participants agreed that both the online format and the fact that the summer school was offered free of charge for the participants were decisive for their participation. However, when asked whether it was important that the summer school was offered with a focus on women, opinions differed. While around half stated that it was important to them that such courses were offered exclusively for women, the other half found it rather unimportant.

Organisation & Event: Prof. Dr. Cornelia Breitkopf, Dr. Sandra Buchmüller, Annika Leonie Jung (SHK), Mathew Martin (SHK), September 2023

Participants: 25

On 17 and 18 August 2023, the Summer School T*ECO*LOGIES took place at the Institute of Energy Technology of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering in the Merkel Building of TU Dresden. The organisers, Prof. Dr. Cornelia Breitkopf, Professor of Thermodynamics, and Dr. Sandra Buchmüller, Visiting Professor specialising in feminist technology research and design, were overwhelmed by the response to the event. Despite the holiday season and midsummer temperatures, 25 people accepted the invitation to spend two days exploring perspectives on gender, body/neurodiversity and ecology in relation to technology - topics that are not normally central to the engineering sciences, but are of central importance in view of current social and ecological problems. To the full report

© Maren Weissig

Girls and women in science face many questions: How do I shape my scientific career? How do I present myself properly at symposia? How do I behave in committees? How do stays abroad help me? At what stage of my academic qualification does it make sense to start a family? What career opportunities do I have? Can I still enter an academic career after professional practice?

The event on 11.02.2023 was the kick-off for an annual meeting for networking and exchange in a relaxed atmosphere.

© Dr. Anja Blüher

For the 8th International Day of Women and Girls in Science, an event was held for the first time also at TU Dresden. The initiator, Maren Weissig, organized the event with support from the central office of the Equal Opportunity Officers of the TU Dresden and the Equal Opportunity Officers from the School of Engineering Sciences as well as the central Diversity Management.

© Dr. Anja Blüher

Numerous guests and speakers contributed to the success of the event, some of whom gave very personal insights into their careers and the decision-making interfaces into their private lives, which showed the students present in particular that careers are not always straightforward and that courage and confidence should not be given up despite difficult situations. Rather, the important role of mentors and role models was emphasized, who often showed the way. At the subsequent get-together, a birthday cake was symbolically cut and lively discussions and exchanges took place.

We would like to thank all participants who, despite the cold temperatures and the Saturday deadline, helped to launch this dialogue format for the International Day of Women and Girls in Science (IDWGS):

Program schedule

Responsible: Dr. Sabine Apelt
Participants: 40

Review

© Sabine Apelt

The Summerschool took place exclusively online via BigBlueButton, materials were made available via a folder in the ZIH Cloudstore. In the mornings, the course program took place, of which 07.-08.06.22 for beginners and 09.06.-10.06.22 for advanced students. The afternoons were reserved for guided self-study time to work independently on tasks related to what had just been learned, as well as for networking (BarCamp, Escape Game, Symposium and final session) between the participants of all parts of the course.

The content of the beginners' course was an introduction to imperative programming with the CMU CS Academy, creating first programs with commands by varying the parameters, recognizing and correcting syntax errors, interaction possibilities with the CS Academy, the Python editor Thonny, built-in functions, input-processing-output, simple and compound data types, operators and evaluation of expressions, control structures - branches and loops, importing libraries, reading and understanding documentation and creating own algorithms.

The advanced part was based on the book https://python-fuer-ingenieure.de/ by Dr. Knoll and dealt with interactive working with Jupyter notebooks, numerical computing with Numpy, 2D visualization with Matplotlib, symbolic computing with Sympy, data processing and analysis with Numpy and Pandas, simulation of dynamic systems with scipy. integrage, optimization with scipy.optimize, further topics according to interest (e.g. control of external devices and hardware, signal processing, 3D visualization, knowledge representation, ...) as well as the independent application of Python to simple and challenging engineering problems.

Feedback

We had more than 350 applications for participation in the Summerschool, and selected 60 of them according to suitable criteria as well as by chance. In the end, however, only 40 actually participated, but these were very motivated and also participated well in the guided self-study time. The feedback from the participants was generally very positive, with the most praiseworthy mention being that the Summerschool participation was free of charge and that the course was easily compatible with family tasks due to the online implementation.