Our mission
There are three E’s that we mainly focus on: Engagement, Exchange and Education.
Pursuing sciences is often as much about passion as it is about working long hours, making compromises, and commitment to problem solving. Physics is tough business! Hence, a major aspect we focus on is engagement — informal meetings, picnics and celebrating career milestones not only help us to have active scientific discussions in a more relaxed setting, but also help create a healthy environment where people can freely express themselves.
Engaging in regular activities and network would, in turn help in exchanging ideas, be it with regards to research, science or other themes. Such healthy exchanges would not only help the community grow, but also provide perspective and a wider network of collective learning for everyone to benefit from.
We stand on the shoulders of giants- there have been innumerable women who have paved the way everyday for progress in physics and, more importantly, in the advancement of other women in science. We aim to celebrate this by learning from each other’s personal and professional journeys.
As a future goal, we would like to educate young girls so that they are encouraged in more ways than one to studying sciences. Another aspect of our goal of education is outreach: by using our platform, we want to reach out to the general public and create awareness about the joys of pursuing Physics.
The Team
To promote the topics that are important to us and also to be able to address all the needs of everyone more efficiently, we have contact persons across all career stages in the department.
Vaishnavi Jayakumar![]() |
Vaishnavi is currently a PhD student in the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of Cologne, and the founder of the Association for Women in Physics. Her research mainly focuses on multi-orbital extensions to the Hubbard model and its applications in strongly correlated materials. She is passionate about equality, inclusion and equal opportunity for all, which was the main reason behind her founding the AWP (previously “Women’s Coffee Corner”) at the University, in February 2022. vj[at]thp.uni-koeln.de Tel.: 0221-470-1053 |
Andrea Bliesener![]() |
Andrea did the PhD on the growth of topological insulator films by molecular beam epitaxy in the II. Physics Institute and is now working as a science manager at the cluster ML4Q (Matter and Light for Quantum Computing). andrea.bliesener[at]uni-koeln.de Tel.: 0221-470 89200 |
Bettina Heyne![]() |
heyne[at]ph1.uni-koeln.de Tel.: 0221-470-3483 |
Annemarie Sich![]() |
asich[at]smail.uni-koeln.de |
This could be you!![]() |



