Starting in 2022, the Faculty of Engineering organized the first Women’s Marathon on May 8th – the International Women’s Day – for offering an option for women of Electrical and Information Engineering, Computer Science, and Material Science to present their research or talk about their work and studies. Just the three institutes where able to give talks for over 12 hours time non stop. Having the percentage of women at these institutes in mind, if was a huge success offered by the women of the Faculty of Engineering.

Since after the event other faculties reached us and ask for participation in the following year, the second edition of the Women’s Marathon was an event by the university and nearly all faculties were involved. In number, on March 8th 2023, 15 faculties and bodies of Kiel University were involved and we 53 talks in three parallel sessions.

Mainly, this day of talks is meant to present all the various areas women at Kiel University work in, but it is also there to remind everyone that the situation for women at universities is still not optimal, e.g., too few women start to study, a higher-than-average drop-out rate, and the glass ceiling. Thus, all the speakers not only want to enthuse the audience about their work but also want to encourage pupils to start studies, students to keep on with their studies, and PhD-students and PostDocs to aim higher.

Alongside to the talks, there is time for questions and networking. Even in the university, one never knows if there isn’t the chance of a collaboration between people who never thought that their fields of experience overlap.

 

ACM-W Europe has been supporting this event since the beginning which made us to make this event as ACM Celebration of Women in Computing.  You can find more about our event from its webpage.

Please visit the links below to find out more details about our event.

ACM Celebration of Women in Computing: Women’s Marathon 2026

ACM Celebration of Women in Computing: Women’s Marathon 2024