3. Girls' Day at BIOSS

“Look into my eyes, fruit fly”: Twenty-three girls from secondary grammar school learned about the exciting world of signalling research in BIOSS’s labs.

Girls from schools in Freiburg, all over the region of Südbaden and even as far away as near Tauberbischofsheim came to this year’s Girls’ Day to check out what was under the microscopes in BIOSS’s laboratories. The twenty-three girls formed three groups that took turns watching with interest as scientists Virginie Lecaudey, Andrea Weber, Max Ulbrich and Georgios Pyrowolakis worked at their stations. The scientists and their teams showed the girls that “signalling research” is about many different and important things.

Girls’ Day is an annual national event that gives girls the opportunity to discover interesting new careers in the natural sciences, IT and engineering. Girls can chose between different programmes, including visiting the researchers at BIOSS. Girls between 13 and 15 years got some hands-on experience with bacteria DNA with Andrea Weber in the BIOSS Toolbox. The girls were also excited to see the glowing zebrafish that Virginie Lecaudey presented, and they listened with fascination while Lecaudey demonstrated what role these fish play in research.

A highlight for the girls was being able to try things out for themselves and working with the microscopes. They even got to look at glowing molecules through a laser microscope with Max Ulbrich, and in Georgios Pyrowolakis’s laboratory they took a new look at fruit flies and learned more about what makes them special.