MSE Seminar Series

Friday, March 26, 2021 @11:40am
*Remote course - Zoom link will be provided

Dr. Petra Rudolf, Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials, University of Groningen

presents

How to Keep Women (and Men) in Science

ABSTRACT:
The EU report on Women in Science identifies different risks, which can result in the drop out of women from academic life at different career stages: at the beginning (PhD phase) it is mainly the lack of support from the supervisor, in the postdoc phase the problem of reconciling career and motherhood is most acute, then the risk shifts to lack of career expectations and even at the associate/full professor level there remains a risk due to isolation and exclusion. I shall discuss these issues relying on studies from Europe, the U.S.A. and Japan. Based on the trends that emerge from these studies, I shall also suggest some measures to be taken to ensure that women stay in science. From this it will be obvious that all measures which favor women in science are good for men as well.

BIOGRAPHY:
Petra Rudolf was born in Munich, Germany. She studied Physics at the La Sapienza University of Rome, where she specialized in Solid State Physics. In 1987 she joined the National Surface Science laboratory TASC INFM in Trieste for the following five years, interrupted by two extended periods in 1989 and 1990/1991 at Bell Labs in the USA, where she started to work on the newly discovered fullerenes. In 1993 she joined the University of Namur, Belgium, where she received her PhD in 1995 and then quickly moved from postdoctoral researcher to lecturer and senior lecturer before taking up the Chair in Experimental Solid State Physics at the University in Groningen in the Netherlands in 2003. Her principal research interests lie in the areas of condensed matter physics and surface science, particularly molecular motors, graphene, organic thin films and inorganic-organic hybrids.She has published >250 peer-reviewed articles and 32 book chapters, and given about 200 invited talks at international / national conferences and research institutions. Dr. Rudolf currently serves as President of the European Physical Society and was elected member of the German Academy of Science and Engineering (2016), corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the Institute of Bologna, Fellow of the Institute of Physics (2001), honorary member of the Dutch (2006) and the Italian Physical Society (2018) and Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2010. For her work on molecular motors she received the 2007 Descartes Prize of the European Commission. In 2013 she was appointed Officer of the Order of Orange Nassau by H.M. Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands.