Diclehan Ulucan, this year's DAAD prize winner, has had a major ambition from the very beginning of her studies: to excite people for science and make it more accessible to them. She became interested in the natural sciences at an early age; a biology teacher later sparked her enthusiasm for technical developments, especially in the fields of electrical engineering and artificial intelligence. During her bachelor's degree at Izmir University of Economics in Turkey, she already placed importance on making science and its current developments accessible to people, because not every person who is interested also has access to a structured formal education. To actively contribute towards this intention, she translated articles into Turkish for the Popular Science Turkey Magazine for several years.
Since 2021, she has been working on her doctorate in the field of intrinsic image decomposition and image generation under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Marc Ebner at the University of Greifswald’s Chair of Computer Science - with great success. As a result, she was able to present her research results at the IEEE International Conference on Image Processing in 2022 and gave international presentations on two of her publications in April 2023, which were also nominated for the Best Student Paper Award. Whilst completing her doctorate, she also passes on her enthusiasm for electrical engineering and artificial intelligence to those interested all over the world by providing free online workshops as a member of the Global AI Hub.
A matter close to Diclehan Ulucan's heart is raising the visibility of women in MINT disciplines. As head of the Creative Development Department of Freiraum, a magazine by scholarship holders and alumni of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom, she not only reports on relevant topics and projects that aim to increase the representation of women in MINT disciplines, but also personally organises specific events in this field.
It is particularly important to her to directly support and encourage female early-career researchers to take an interest in the natural sciences: as a mentor in one of the largest online mentoring programmes for girls in MINT disciplines, CyberMentor, as of this year, she is mentoring schoolgirls who are interested in this field of study. "I am delighted that I am now viewed as a role model and I enjoy being able to give something back," says Diclehan Ulucan.
She aims to continue her commitment in her future career and would like to become a professor and inspire young people for science.
The University wishes the prizewinner every success and the very best for the future!
Further information
DAAD Prize
Chair of Computer Science
Media Photos [de]
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