Career in nuclear physics
The Ira Rischowski Programme supports international female Master's students on their way into academia
2023/04/11 by Phyllis Mania
The Ira Rischowski Programme at TU Darmstadt supports international female students on their way into science. In addition to their Master's degree in physics, they gain practical experience with the particle accelerator and the data obtained there at the Institute of Nuclear Physics.
The Ira Rischkowski Programme
The Ira Rischowski Programme supports foreign female students in nuclear physics, nuclear astrophysics, accelerator physics and nuclear photonics. The programme aims to prepare the scholarship holders for a successful career as scientists. It is aimed at foreign female students who have obtained or are about to obtain a Bachelor's degree, who have demonstrated above-average performance in their studies, and who have the goal of pursuing a scientific career in one of these fields. The programme offers a scholarship for 24 months for relevant Master's programmes at the Department of Physics at TU Darmstadt to prepare for a future career in a programme of excellence.
A new round of Ira Rischowski scholarships starts annually in October with the start of the academic year. The selection process takes about four months. The result is announced in the summer to allow enough time for a visa application process. Applications can be submitted at any time, but preferably by February each year for consideration until the start of the scholarship in October of the same year.
The background to the programme is a decision by TU Darmstadt to further improve the situation of women in the aforementioned research areas. The proportion of female scientists in the fields of nuclear and accelerator physics in Germany has increased since the beginning of the century from about 12 percent to approximately 20 percent today. However, the participation of female scientists in these fields is still unsatisfactorily low. The reasons range from a low number of female role models who make these fields attractive to young scientists to a below-average number of applications from female scientists for doctoral positions in the excellence programmes in these fields.