103 schoolgirls on Girls'Day at HZB
The girls creating a website.
Investigative glances into the microscope.
Working as an interior designer.
Making invisible gases visible - from CO2 experiments to electrochemical conversion.
IT-workshop where girls learn how to program.
Experimenting with wires.
A group photo at the end of the day!
On April 3, 2025, the annual Girls' Day took place, giving schoolgirls an insight into various careers in science and technology. We welcomed a total of 103 schoolgirls at our Adlershof and Wannsee sites and offered them a day full of exciting experiments - more participants than ever before!
The girls had the opportunity to take part in various workshops and experiments and gain insights into professions such as physicist, engineer and chemist.
In total, we offered 17 different workshops where they could try out the research topics at HZB in a fun way.
“For me personally, it was a special experience to help shape Girls'Day in my new role in the communications department. It was great to see the curiosity and enthusiasm with which the schoolgirls explored the world of science,” says new HZB colleague Mariam Aliabadi.
Dirk Lohmann, who has been working in the school lab since July last year, also emphasizes the importance of this day: “I think it is fundamentally important to awaken a fascination for science and the technologies of the future in children. Girls' Day gives us the opportunity to get girls interested in careers and training in this area - precisely because they are often still underrepresented here.”
We would like to thank all our colleagues who contributed with their commitment to making Girls' Day at HZB possible with such diverse and exciting workshops.
We hope that the schoolgirls had many new experiences today and that their interest in STEM subjects was awakened.
Girls' Day is an important initiative to get schoolgirls excited about science and technology and to encourage them to pursue careers in these fields as well.
- Understanding physics – with your own handsDirk Lohmann has been head of the school laboratory at HZB's Wannsee site since summer 2024. In this interview, he explains what matters most to him: encouraging young people to explore natural phenomena with their own hands.
- Green hydrogen: MXene boosts the effectiveness of catalystsMXenes are adept at hosting catalytically active particles. This property can be exploited to create more potent catalyst materials that significantly accelerate and enhance the oxygen evolution reaction, which is one of the bottlenecks in the production of green hydrogen via electrolysis using solar or wind power. A detailed study by an international team led by HZB chemist Michelle Browne shows the potential of these new materials for future large-scale applications. The study is published in Advanced Functional Materials.
- Georg Forster Research Fellow explores photocatalystsDr. Moses Alfred Oladele is working on photocatalysis for CO2 conversion in a joint project with the group of Dr. Matt Mayer, HZB, and Prof. Andreas Taubert at the University of Potsdam. The chemist from Redeemer's University in Ede, Nigeria, came to Berlin in the summer of 2024 with a Georg Forster Research Fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and will work at HZB for two years.