Federal Ministry of Education and Research funds new ‘Role2Role’ project for three years

The ‘Role2Role’ project of TU Braunschweig and Haus der Wissenschaft (House of Science) Braunschweig started on 1 January 2025 and is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research for a total of three years. Role2Role is a programme that aims to attract women to STEM studies and careers. The programme uses digital formats and on-site camps to reach female high school students across Germany. The focus is on batteries and fuel cells.

The ‘Role2Role’ project, funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, uses the research club to introduce young female high school students to cutting-edge, socially relevant STEM topics. The project focuses on battery development and fuel cells. Both topics are highly topical and socially relevant. Female mentors and role models are used to strengthen the young female students’ self-efficacy expectations and to enhance their experience of their own creativity and achievement. The mentors are female students of STEM subjects at TU Braunschweig, who are specially trained for their role. They, in turn, benefit from detailed insights into institutes and research areas, contact with role models, integration into their peer group and an introduction to organisation and group leadership. The Role2Role principle will continue as new female STEM students take on the role of mentors in the future.

The Battery Lab Factory at TU Braunschweig provides the content-related framework, which is tailored to the school level by physics didactics and prepared with activating methods online and offline. The effectiveness of this measure is evaluated by educational psychology using evidence-based tools, including changes in self-efficacy expectations.

The self-concept of the mentoring women will also be examined to see how they themselves act as role models and how their own understanding of their role is additionally strengthened by this measure. The Haus der Wissenschaft is available to the network as a practical partner, taking over the event management and organisational responsibility in addition to the many research-related tasks of TU Braunschweig.

Over a period of two months, the schoolgirls will regularly take part in online courses based on interactive rooms, get to know each other and be introduced to the world of battery research. The highlight of each round will be the time spent together at a camp in Braunschweig. Here, the young women will gain practical insights and experience four eventful days as a team. The costs of travel, accommodation, meals and activities will be covered by the project sponsor, so the offer is free of charge for all participants.

Project data:

Start: 1 January 2025
Duration: 3 years
Funded by: German Federal Ministry of Education and Research
Project management agency: German Aerospace Centre
Target group: Schoolgirls: Female senior high school students
Number: Approx. 20 students per course

Technische Universität Braunschweig – Institute for Science Education (IFdN)

The Institute for Science Education is a central player in teacher training and didactic research at TU Braunschweig. The IFdN organises student-centred outreach projects for the two clusters of excellence based at TU Braunschweig, one on sustainable aviation and the other on quantum physics. These extracurricular projects provide young people with motivating access to current fields of research.

https://www.tu-braunschweig.de/ifdn

Technische Universität Braunschweig – Institute of Educational Psychology (IPP)

The Institute of Educational Psychology is part of the Faculty of Humanities and Education. It conducts research on teaching, learning, interaction and trust, and develops and evaluates interventions such as classroom management. Other areas of research interest include teacher professionalisation (including through training), diversity and diversity management (understood as the management of stereotypes), and science communication.

https://www.tu-braunschweig.de/ipp

Technische Universität Braunschweig – Battery LabFactory Braunschweig (BLB)

The Battery LabFactory Braunschweig is a transdisciplinary R&D platform for the development of production processes, diagnostics and simulations of current and future battery technologies. Bringing together 14 professorships and group leaders from three universities, Fraunhofer IST and PTB, the BLB brings together the necessary expertise along the value chain for electrochemical battery storage in Niedersachsen. In its pilot plant, the BLB combines expertise from all MINT disciplines and promotes students by actively involving them in ongoing projects and in the ‘Learning Factory for Circular Battery Cell Production’, which is currently being set up, and the CircularLab, a new pilot plant for battery recycling. The InES project partners are members of the BLB.

https://www.tu-braunschweig.de/blb

Technische Universität Braunschweig – Institute for Energy and Process Systems Engineering (InES)

The Institute of Energy and Process Systems Engineering (InES) develops technologies for future energy conversion and storage. InES has many years of experience in modelling, simulation and experimental investigation of batteries (electrochemical analysis and operando analysis), as well as in the field of sustainable material synthesis and virtual teaching cooperation with the partner university of the TU in Rhode Island, USA.

https://www.tu-braunschweig.de/ines

Haus der Wissenschaft Braunschweig GmbH

The Haus der Wissenschaft Braunschweig is a platform for dialogue between science and other areas of society. It promotes scientific communication and the interdisciplinary networking of science with business, local government, educational institutions and the media, as well as with interested members of the public. As a place for experimentation and learning, it offers exciting events and exhibitions for people of all ages.