In the week of the 10th International Day of Women and Girls in Science, we are want to celebrate and showcase innovation by highlighting some promising female scientists under 40. These emerging researchers from Germany and around the globe are making remarkable strides across various fields. Below are the short profiles of five notable young female scientists whose work is shaping the future.
Julia Bühner has won the Johannes Zilkens-Promotionspreis 2024 for her interdisciplinary study on the conquest of the Canary Islands (1402 – 1496) in international law. Bühner, who completed her doctorate in Medieval History in 2022, is a postdoc at the Goethe University Frankfurt. Her work focuses on the history of the Canary Islands, the School of Salamanca, and new approaches to the history of conquest and expansion.
Katie Bouman is an US-American computer scientist known for developing the CHIRP algorithm that captured the first image of a black hole in 2019. She earned her degrees from the University of Michigan and MIT and is now an Assistant Professor at Caltech. Her current research focuses on computational imaging, designing systems that integrate algorithm and sensor design to observe phenomena previously difficult to measure.
Eugene Kim is a biophysicist at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysics in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. She received the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize in 2024 for her research on chromosome structure and dynamics, utilizing a variety of microscopic techniques to investigate single molecules in cells. Dr. Kim’s work has advanced our understanding of DNA folding and organization within cells.
Annabell Zander has studied Prehistoric Archaeology at the University of Cologne and is an expert in Palaeolithic and Mesolithic lithic technology and climate change archaeology. In her research as a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of York, she delves into human-environment interactions during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition in northwestern Europe, integrating archaeological data with climate and environmental science.
Carolin Müller earned her Master in chemistry and completed her doctorate at university Jena. She worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Jena and the University of Luxembourg before being called to FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg as a professor in November 2023. Her research focuses on light-induced processes in chemistry, combining quantum chemistry and chemoinformatics. In 2023, Benjamin Dietzek-Ivanšić, Linda Zedler, and Carolin Müller were awarded the Thuringian Research Prize for their collaborative work on innovative spectroscopic methods in photocatalysis, which allows observation of previously unseen processes.
We know this list isn’t finished yet, and there are so many more amazing women out there doing brilliant research in the early stages of their careers. We just want to say a big thank you to these scientists, who show how much women can contribute to pushing the boundaries of scientific knowledge in so many different areas. Their work is an inspiration to future generations, showing them that careers in science and technology can be really exciting!
