Soapbox Science Takes Part in NRW Day 2024
Under the motto “Together Connected – Generation NRW,” NRW Day 2024 brought together around 40 cities and regions, voluntary associations, the police, and numerous other organizations to celebrate the state’s birthday in one of the largest public festivals in North Rhine-Westphalia.
Among the many lively activities, Soapbox Science Rhineland was featured in the science tent organized by the Ministry of Science and Culture, where four female scientists were invited to share their research stories with the public. One of them was Janine Lorenz, a materials scientist and PhD candidate at Forschungszentrum Jülich. Taking to the soapbox stage, Janine offered a glimpse into her work on the atomic structure of superconducting crystals, as seen through a nanomicroscope. At this microscopic level, even the slightest impurities in the material can disrupt its superconducting properties. Overcoming these imperfections is a key challenge that Janine and many researchers are tackling—an essential step toward the advancement of quantum computing.
Soapbox Science Rhineland is organized annually by three excellence clusters in NRW, including ML4Q (Matter and Light for Quantum Computing). The event aims to achieve two central goals: making cutting-edge science accessible to the broader public and raising the visibility of female and non-binary scientists within the scientific community and beyond.
NRW Day was first celebrated in 2006 to mark the 60th anniversary of the state, held in Düsseldorf. Since then, it has been hosted in a different region every two years. This year, the city of Cologne welcomed thousands of visitors to Rheinauhafen, where dozens of activities paid tribute to the occasion.