CUI has established a special guest professorship program, to which Prof. Mildred Dresselhaus from the Department of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has kindly given her name. The program includes a prize, which is presented during CUI’s festive New Year’s reception.
Credits: Andreas Vallbracht, UHH, RRZ/MCC Arvid Mentz
All her professional life, Mildred Dresselhaus has engaged herself in the promotion of women in natural sciences. Thus the renowned professor decided to support the program’s contents:
- Provision of excellent research conditions for international outstanding female researchers: annually, the guest professorship is awarded to a successful senior scientist (Senior Award with personal prize money of Euro 20,000 plus a certificate), as well as to a younger researcher with high potential (Junior Award with a personal prize money of Euro 10,000 plus a certificate)
- Invitation to work within CUI for a period of two to six months;
- Providing role models for young women in the physical sciences;
- Attracting world leading researchers to Hamburg, starting new and intensifying existing collaborations;
- Giving a few lectures or focussing on a topic of choice.
List of Mildred Dresselhaus Guest Professors
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Photo: Quinn
Mildred Dresselhaus, Professor of Physics and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was a clear role model and leader in promoting opportunities for women in science and engineering.
She was born to Polish immigrants in the Bronx, New York, in 1930. As a young woman, she was advised that the only jobs open to her were schoolteacher, secretary or nurse. However, inspired by her physics teacher and future Nobel Laureate Rosalyn Yalow, she graduated from Hunter College with a science degree in 1951.
In 1958 Mildred Dresselhaus obtained her Ph.D. at the University of Chicago and – after marrying and giving birth to four children – she became the first tenured professor in MIT‘s engineering department in 1968.
Mildred Dresselhaus died on 20 February 2017 at age 86: MIT News Office