From 24 to 26 March 2021, researchers and artists from the DiGiTal graduate program will present their projects and works at the three-day digital event "Digital Arts and Science. Interdisciplinary Digitization Research". Lectures, discussions, interactive workshops, installations, music, podcasts and live demos: various digital formats provide insight into the entire range of topics and projects – from lifelong learning and cognitive and knowledge spaces in the digital world to participation and sustainability in the digitalized fashion industry to language, narration and communication in the post-digitalized space.
The event is structured in cross-university and interdisciplinary thematic clusters. The Museum für Naturkunde Berlin is represented by Dr. Verónica Díez Díaz with the topic "Digitalization of the future and the past".
Background information
The Berlin university program "DiGiTal - Digitization: Shaping and Transformation" for the promotion of female scientists and artists is the joint offer of 13 Berlin universities for the promotion of women in digitization research. It aims to attract excellent young female researchers and support them on their way to professorships. Since the beginning of 2018, female scientists and artists at the participating universities have been conducting innovative and interdisciplinary research on current issues of digitization in the DiGiTal university program in the predoc and postdoc phases, thus contributing to the development of Berlin as a digitization capital. In 2020, 13 female participants were accepted into the program.
DiGital is funded by the Berlin Program for the Promotion of Equal Opportunities for Women in Research and Teaching and is under the expert leadership of a cross-university scientific advisory board. As initiator and supporter of the program, it is co-designed by the state conference of women's representatives at Berlin universities. The Technische Universität Berlin, as the lead university, has taken over the coordination of the Berlin University Program and established an office, which is located in the Office for the Advancement of Women and Gender Equality at the Technische Universität Berlin.
Dr. Verónica Díez Díaz (HU Berlin) obtained her degree in Biology and her PhD in Geology in Spain. Her research focuses on the study of the European sauropod dinosaurs, and she has been digitizing the fossils from the vertebrate palaeontology collection of the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin since 2015. In her current research project she is analysing more effective digitization methods, as well as quantitative and qualitative comparisons between 3D models, with the aim of creating a digital collection with the highest quality. She believes in Open Science and aims at making digital data open for everybody. In her talks and interviews, she emphasizes the importance of digitizing nature collections, not only for scientific research, but also for the preservation of our heritage and its dissemination. She has won the Digital Female Leader Award in Science in 2018, thanks to her current digitisation project.