Once again this year, emergenCITY Week closed on May 28th with the presentation of the Female Student Travel Awards. The sponsoring organizations presented the prizes to a total of seven pre-selected winners. Thomas Schneider presented the award to Anna Oeckl from CROSSING. Simone Schaub-Meyer handed the prizes from The Third Wave of AI (3AI) by hessian.AI to Linyin Huang and Samea Yusofi and Anna Rohrbach awarded Isabelle Clev and Ruth Hartmann on behalf of the Zuse School ELIZA.

Florian Steinke, PI and representative in the team for equality and family issues at emergenCITY, honored the two winners selected by the LOEWE research center, Helena Sax and Noreen Mehler. Both had applied with key contributions linked to emergenCITY’s research interests: Sax is working on the interdisciplinary resilience of energy systems and Mehler is interested in how everyday smart home devices can provide communication and information during a crisis.

All winners will be funded to attend an international conference focusing on networking between female researchers in computer science and engineering.

Four young women laughing and discussing at a table in the foreground and older people in the background talking
© emergenCITY

Some of the Female Student Travel Award winners and the emergenCITY representatives at a joint networking lunch.

Ruzena Bajcsy Lecture

Traditionally, the presentation follows a public Ruzena Bajcsy Lecture. This year, Katja Mombaur, a leading expert in human-centered robotics at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), presented current approaches from her research on humanoid robots and exoskeletons and answered questions in the discussion afterwards.

A women with microphone in front of a screen talking to an audience
© Daniela Fleckenstein

Prof. Katja Mombaur during her talk on exoskeletons and humanoid robots

emergenCITY winner Helena Sax

Helena Sax studied Electrical Engineering and Information Technology as well as Science and Engineering at TU Darmstadt. In her master’s thesis, she focused on accelerating the transient stability analysis of inverter-based energy systems using Physics-Informed Neural Networks (PINNs).

“The stability analysis of converters, especially for the transient case, is a key issue when it comes to making critical infrastructure more resilient. In addition to the challenges posed by inverter technologies, these also generate new potential vulnerabilities in the cyber security of energy grids, as they are highly networked and could be targeted via control units.” - Helena Sax

Sax’s work pursues an interdisciplinary perspective and makes an important contribution to research into resilient energy grids. For this, she was awarded the Female Student Travel by emergenCITY.

Sax is now working and starting her doctorate as a research assistant at the Department of Electrical Engineering at TU Darmstadt. At the beginning of November 2025, she will be attending the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, the world’s largest conference for women in computer science, in Chicago with the financial support of emergenCITY.

“It is a great honor for me to be the recipient of the Female Student Travel Award! I am already looking forward to the numerous workshops, insights into leading technology companies and, above all, to the exchange with a diverse community - and all this in an extraordinary city: Chicago! Participating in the conference is a valuable opportunity for me to combine my research with international perspectives and to take away new ideas that I can actively contribute to the discussion on digital and sustainable energy systems in Darmstadt.” - Helena Sax

More information about Helena Sax and her research: www.eins.tu-darmstadt.de

Zwei Frauen mit Urkunde und Blumen und ein Mann vor einem Kunstwerk
© Daniela Fleckenstein

Female Student Travel Award Winners Helena Sax (left) and Noreen Mehler (middle) with emergenCITY representative Prof. Florian Steinke (right)

emergenCITY award winner Noreen Mehler

Noreen Mehler is pursuing two Master’s degrees in IT Security and Computer Science at TU Darmstadt. In her bachelor’s thesis, which was awarded the prestigious CAST IT Security Award in 2024, she dealt with the security and localization of IoT (Internet of Things) devices.

“Now, I am interested in how everyday devices can be used for communication and information gathering in crisis situations. For example, to locate buried victims in collapsed buildings using built-in temperature sensors. I look at the network protocols of IoT devices in detail.” - Noreen Mehler

Norren Mehler’s field of research is directly linked to important research areas within emergenCITY on smart home devices and how they can be useful in crisis situations. As a Female Student Travel Award winner, she is also planning to attend the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing.

“The award is a great motivation for me and opens up access to scientific networks and conferences. It also represents a possible first step towards a doctorate for me. At the same time, it shows how important the LOEWE center emergenCITY takes the promotion of young researchers - which I really appreciate.” - Noreen Mehler

About the Female Student Travel Award

With the Female Student Travel Award, the LOEWE centre emergenCITY, the collaborative research centre CROSSING, the cluster project The Third Wave of AI (3AI) by hessian.AI, and the Zuse School ELIZA recognize exceptionally well performances of female students of all subjects connected to the topics of the awarding projects - from resilience research to expertise in cryptography, artificial intelligence or machine learning, be it from a perspective of computer science, electrical engineering, information technology! As a prize, the award winners can attend a conference out of a preselected list, which is focused on connecting female computer science and engineering researchers, to take advantage of the excellent networking opportunities during these events.

More Information: www.emergenCITY.de/fsta