“A fantastic reward for young women scientists”
Barbara Hobom talks about the prize named after her and the balance between research and family
Dr Barbara Hobom is a former science journalist and biologist at the University of Freiburg. She coined a term for an entire field of research when she wrote “synthetic biology” in an article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung already 21 years ago. Every year, the BIOSS Centre for Biological Signalling Studies hands out an award that is named after her. Through the Barbara Hobom Prize, which includes €10,000 in prize money, the cluster of excellence supports promising young women scientists who do outstanding research projects in the fields of synthetic biology, signalling and bioengineering.
Michael Reth, Elena Kiss and Barbara Hobom
“It shows women scientists that all their effort pays off”
Dr Hobom is happy about the award introduced by the cluster of excellence: “This is a fantastic reward for young women scientists. It shows them that all their effort pays off. Women are encouraged to continue to research.” Together with Prof Dr Michael Reth, the scientific director of BIOSS, Dr Hobom always hands out the prize personally at the award ceremony. The last few prize winners were able to convince the jury with their important scientific findings. Elina Kiss, who received the prize in 2011, for example, studied the impact of food on the body. Dr Hobom stresses that Kiss has made several “extremely interesting observations”.
Finish doctoral candidate to receive Barbara-Hobom-Prize
Balance between family and research
The cluster of excellence uses the possibilities entrusted to it as an excellence initiative to maintain gender equality through practical impact. For BIOSS, it is essential to both provide the necessary institutional conditions to create individual scientific career paths for women and motivate them to take these paths. The Barbara Hobom Prize contributes toward this goal by expanding young women researchers’ possibilities and helping them to launch a career. The woman who has lent her name to the prize says she is aware that it is never easy for a female scientist to find the perfect balance between family and research: “Research demands too much involvement from a woman scientist for that. Of course, a woman scientist who wants to devote herself entirely to research can consciously forego having children. But there are enough examples of women scientists who have managed to be great scientists while also having a family and raising children at the same time.”
“It will pay off, if a highly talented young woman is not lost to research”
An essential part of the equality measures at BIOSS is the support of people with children, so they can balance their family and career. For both women and men with children, the cluster offers family-friendly scheduling of meetings and seminars, childcare during BIOSS conferences, short-term childcare and help finding babysitters as well as financial support for university childcare centres. According to Dr Hobom, this support is fundamental to making it easier for women researchers to find a better balance between children and their scientific work. Furthermore, she believes it is especially important for the heads of laboratories to give women researchers who have small children a special position for a while, meaning they should ideally cultivate a real understanding for the fact that these women researchers really do need support. For instance, they could exempt them from full-time work for a period of time while at the same time keeping them involved – for example, with a task that can be done easily during this phase, like managing the journal club. This would enable these women scientists to “keep the ball rolling”. As Dr Hobom stresses, such short-term pro-active understanding “will pay off, if a highly talented young woman is not lost to research that way”.