In 2022, the Department of Physics at FAU hosted DIPHER22 - Diversity in Physics for the Diversity of Physics - the first conference to unite the diversity of research topics and people at the university. The conference combined talks on physics and gender and diversity with workshops and panel discussions. Female researchers from different parts of the world came to Erlangen to talk about their research and share their personal experiences in the course of their scientific careers with the approximately 100 participants. The FAU honored the commitment of the DIPHER22 organizing team by awarding them the Renate-Wittern-Sterzel Prize, named after the first women's representative at the university.

Shada Abu Hattum and Gesine Murphy were part of the DIPHER22 organizing team as Gender Equality Officer and deputy Gender Equality Officer of the MPL, alongside Laura Blázquez Martínez, who participated as a representative of the MPL students. They helped to organize the workshops and to contact and invite the speakers. Shada Abu Hattum was pleased with the turnout and the mix of science and personal stories. One fact in particular stuck with her: "We had all these strong female role models in research who came from all over the world and had taken very different paths in life. And yet all the speakers had similar experiences when it came to diversity and gender equality. They all had to deal with the same challenges."

DIPHER will be held every two years, with the next event taking place in 2024. Flore Kunst, the newly appointed Gender Equality Officer at the MPL, has already marked the date in her calendar. The organizing team plans to use the prize money to prepare the DIPHER24 conference. Shada Abu Hattum hopes that the number of participants in 2024 will be even higher than in 2022, and that the audience will be even more diverse.

Foto (FAU/Ianicelli): Orginizational team of DIPHER22. Shada Abu Hattum (first from the right) represents the MPL team.