StuFoExpo 2025

StuFoExpo presents: Fail Better - The art of failure in research

On December 5, 2025, we celebrated a very special topic at StuFoExpo: the art of failure in research. Because failure is just as much a part of science as success. Experiments fail, data remains meaningless or hypotheses turn out to be wrong. This is often not talked about enough. With Fail Better @ StuFoExpo, we wanted to change exactly that.

In a protected setting, students reported on projects that went differently than planned and what they learned from them. Our aim was to promote a positive culture of failure at TU Dresden, to show that failure can also be an opportunity and to take the horror out of the topic.

Patricia Beuter moderated the afternoon. We were very pleased about this, as she was a student member of the StuFoExpo organization team for two years.

Program highlights

Inspiring start with Rico Nerger

Rico Nerger, Research Associate at the Chair of Space Systems, opened the afternoon with his presentation: "When a rover just keeps going - Error Culture in student (space) projects".
He described personal experiences from the student project STAR and the European Rover Challenge 2021. His conclusion: setbacks and mistakes are not a dead end, but a springboard for change and improvement.
With this motivating impulse, he encouraged students and guests not to be discouraged by mistakes, but to learn from them and move on.

Student lectures: Projects and their challenges

In short 2-minute pitches, three students presented their research projects and the difficulties they faced:

• Riya Rajayyan (Chemistry)
  Experimental investigation of OER selectivity with using COF-coated electrodes in seawater electrolysis
• Julia Katharina Kampa (Education/Public Health)
  Missing Perspectives - Where is the research of mentoring for immigrant women?
• Salar Sarvarinouri (Environmental Sciences)
  Modeling Glaciers in the Mesoscale Hydrological Model (mHM)

Afterwards, a poster session with finger food and drinks offered the opportunity to discuss the projects and the experiences of the participants and guests in dealing with setbacks in research.

The student presentations were concluded by Gabriel Pinto Veas (Biology in Science) with his science slam "Failed to reproduce: How everything went wrong with my thesis".
He took the audience on his personal journey full of setbacks and showed how important it is to talk openly about failure.

Interactive workshop: "Navigating Failure: A Personal Approach"

However, the event focused not only on setbacks, mistakes and failure, but also on how to deal with them.

The workshop "Navigating Failure: A personal Approach", led by Julia Franke, was open to all participants and guests.

In this short workshop, the participants explored how they can deal with moments of academic and personal "failure" with clarity and self-compassion. Together, they reflected on typical emotional reactions and developed strategies for dealing with these challenges and finding new motivation.
Building on this, the participants created a personal "Failure First Aid Card", a practical aid for dealing with difficult moments in future projects and plans.

At the end of the event, the presentations by Gabriel Pinto Veas and Julia Katharina Kampa were recognized for their special contributions.

We would like to thank the students who showed the courage to share their failed projects with us and all participants for their interest in a positive error culture.

A brief digression on the relevance of a positive error culture in science and research

A good error culture is not only a sign of openness, but also an essential building block for progress in science and research. Mistakes and unexpected results are an inseparable part of scientific work, because they are not setbacks, but important learning processes that bring us a step closer to the truth. A university that promotes a constructive error culture not only creates trust, but also space for genuine innovation. If errors are concealed or ignored, false assumptions arise that can distort research and waste valuable resources (keyword: publication bias).

Especially in science, it is crucial to also make null results or "failed" experiments visible in order to avoid unnecessary duplication of work and ensure the quality of research. Only through transparency and an open approach to mistakes can science become sustainable and credible.

Especially at universities, where the foundations for scientific work are laid, it is therefore essential to create an atmosphere in which students and researchers alike are encouraged to learn from mistakes and accept them as part of the knowledge process. If we care about science and research, there is no way around a positive and reflective error culture.