Claudia Langenberg (born 1972 in Munich) is a German epidemiologist and specialist who researches and works in the field of public health. She has been doing research as Professor of Computational Medicine at the Berlin Institute of Health (BIH) since 2020. “The exemplary first sentence of the Wikipedia entry – and for most of them, in the future, the first source with which they will learn more about Langenberg.
The entry is in the online encyclopedia for a few days, it is one of 20 biographies that will be shown in the exhibition “Berlin – the capital of women scientists” in the Rots Rathaus until 20 December.
The 20 boards with texts and illustrations exemplify the initiative of Langenberg’s employer, BIH, to make scientific contributions by women more visible. Wikipedia entries are created or expanded in edit-a-thons, writing workshops, in which about 50 committed participants – from 16-year-old schoolgirls to 70-year-old seniors – learn to research biographies and prepare them for Wikipedia . .
Science for the masses: Berlin “means business”
The period in which the scientists describe working in Berlin spans more than 100 years. One of them is brain researcher Cecil Vogt (1875 to 1962), who worked at the University of Berlin from 1902 and was nominated 13 times for the Nobel Prize, but was never awarded.
Chemist Emmanuel Charpentier, who was described in more detail than previously and who received the Nobel Prize for his Crispus 2020 gene scissors, shows that many hurdles have now been overcome. But still only 25 percent of professorships in Germany are held by women, allowing Berlin, with the highest proportion nationwide of 33 percent, to truly lay claim to the title of “capital of women scientists.”
On the opening evening, Claudia Langenberg thinks that Berlin is “so serious” about diverse initiatives for equal opportunities, with the current exhibition at the Red City Hall and a larger public for science in general. “It’s really only like this in Berlin,” says the epidemiologist, who was previously program director at the University of Cambridge.
Natural History Museum as Central Campus of Science Week
To get to know the “Brain City” even better, there is an opportunity during the Sixth Berlin Science Week from November 1 to November 10 with nearly 500 participants from science, science-related companies and politics in over 200 different events.
The long “week” begins on Saturday, October 30 in Urania with “Tabula Rasa – The Science You Can Touch”. From 2 pm to 8 pm, the “25 Most Innovative and Extraordinary Projects” from a scientific landscape selected by the jury will be presented free of charge. Areas such as design research, rainwater harvesting, urban logistics, synthetic biology, robotics, linguistics and nuclear physics are represented.
[Das Programm der Berlin Science Week finden Sie hier – und im Tagesspiegel-Magazin zur Science Week]
On 5 and 6 November the central festival location is the “Berlin Science Week Campus” at the Museum für Naturkunde. Among other things, there will be meetings with an incarnation of Albert Einstein, with experts who will explain how the European research sector is responding to climate change, and with science “flowers!” shows.
The “Bauhutte 4.0” at the former Tegel Airport, a group for innovative wooden construction in Berlin to be built 10,000 residential units, is also depicted with a stand.
The “New Smart Neighborhood” will be presented in detail in a Zoom session on November 4th from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. – one of several digital events during Science Week. Much is offered in hybrid formats, including the program for the International Falling Walls Conference on Current Scientific Breakthroughs.
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