IRTG joins Girls’ Day 2026 – Women in power

On April 23rd, a new cohort of young female scientists arrived straight from school at our field station in Rauischholzhausen, as well as our greenhouse and lab here in Gießen. Our young (though not quite as young as the students) PhD candidates organized the Girls’ Day. Girls’ Day is an annual event where school students can explore careers that are traditionally male-dominated (with less than 40% female representation). Unfortunately, as PhD students in STEM fields, we are still part of this statistic.

Two projects took place simultaneously. Here in Gießen, PhD candidates Anika Unger, Zsa Zsa Boyny, and Rica-Hanna Schlichtermann organized a day that began in the greenhouse. The five students got to know the different crops we work with, took leaf samples, and even experimented a little with liquid nitrogen. Afterward, we moved to the lab to extract DNA, load gels, and measure concentrations. We have to admit: the girls loaded the gels better than some master’s students we encountered during our own studies. We were all thoroughly impressed! To wrap up the day in Gießen, we had some fun using the 3D scanner. This time, the students phenotyped themselves and segmented their own scans instead of crops.

Meanwhile, six more girls travelled to Rauischholzhausen to experience plant breeding in the field. Jason Wenzig and Jing Ma organized the day, which included crossing rapeseed, flying a drone, and spontaneously taking a group photo with it. The students also takeover some important scorings in the DroughtSpotterXXL facility. They phenotyped the plant height by hand to compare the collected values with the digital values recorded by the 3D scanner. Next, they had the enjoyable task of conducting statistical analysis to validate the accuracy of the ground truth. While the plants were fascinating, the cows of the field station stole much of the girls’ attention.

In the end, all the girls said they had a lot of fun and gained new perspectives on potential career paths. To motivate them all got a little gift, thanks to Marie Fuchs. Hopefully, we’ll see some of them return for internships, bachelor’s or master’s degrees, PhDs, or even professorships—even if we’re no longer here ourselves!