Goodbye gender gap - how the Innovation Office at the University of Bern supports young female entrepreneurs
Women are still underrepresented in scientific research and entrepreneurship. Equality and equal opportunities are therefore essential in order to remove barriers to access and create non-discriminatory working environments. This is a concern that the UniBE Foundation is also addressing. In conversation with Dr Stefanie Dobitz, it becomes clearer what challenges young female researchers and entrepreneurs face today and what can be done to support them.
Common denominator
Bern, 8 March, 14:04, the lecture theatre in the "sitem - in the Swiss Institute for Translational and Entrepreneurial Medicine" is slowly filling up with people. One of the topics of today's lecture "AI Med-Tech Founders" is equal opportunities and the question of whether it is more difficult for women than men to start a company in a STEM field. In my role for the UniBE Foundation, I am sitting in the audience today together with researchers and companies in the field of medical technology and artificial intelligence. To delve a little deeper into the issue of equal opportunities in the field of entrepreneurship, I am hoping for an interview with Dr Stefanie Dobitz from the Innovation Office at the University of Bern, who deals with these issues, among others. There are already measures in place that have addressed the issue of equal opportunities: For example, the Innovation Office at the University of Bern has organised the event series "Women who start up", which discusses potential hurdles and opportunities for women. Diversity is also consciously represented and there are role models that show how heterogeneous teams - and not just in terms of gender - look and function. In addition, organisations such as the Institute for Equal Opportunities and FemSpin (see below for more information) have been created to make a difference.
The UniBE Foundation has also been committed to equality since its establishment in 2021 and has made the topics of diversity, intercultural knowledge and talent development a central focus of its work. Diversity is particularly important because it provides the best framework for solving complex challenges. The UniBE Foundation thus supports the University of Bern in realising and shaping these key topics. The issue is also important to me: as a woman and a Master's student in clinical psychology, the topic affects me personally because I also want to keep the option of pursuing an academic career open - and preferably with my chances of equality intact
Interview with Dr Stefanie Dobitz
UniBE Foundation: Mrs Dobitz, how should I imagine your work as Innovation & Startup Advisor Health and Medicine?
The idea behind the Innovation Office is to support students and researchers at the University of Bern and Inselspital who are conducting translational research and are planning to turn their research into a start-up. In my field, health and medicine, everything revolves around future patients and the development of new drugs and diagnostic tests. Specifically, how patients are currently being cared for and how they can be better cared for in the future.
What attracted you to do this work?
I previously worked in sales for a contract manufacturer and was able to support customers who were developing future medicines and diagnostic tests. The exciting thing was to be involved in these projects at such an early stage and to know what will be possible for patients in five or ten years' time. And that's exactly what fascinates me in the Innovation Office: understanding what research can do for people in everyday life. The second point is that you can watch people grow. I've been at the University of Bern for about a year now and there are projects that I've been involved in since then. I think it's great to see how these people have grown as personalities, even if the start-up doesn't work as planned afterwards. That's what I give every person: Take it as an experience, no matter how well it works afterwards.
What do you think are the biggest challenges for young female researchers?
Part of this probably has to do with role models, i.e. whether there are also female role models. There are also fundamental questions such as whether we have the same number of male and female students on a degree programme. Ultimately, this question also prompted us to ask ourselves what we can do specifically as an Innovation Office.
"Take it as an experience, no matter how well it works afterwards."
Dr Stefanie Dobitz
With the "Women who start up" event series, we want to offer women a space to develop themselves further and form an inspiring group that supports each other.
How do you think the gender gap in academic careers can be explained?
That's a very good question. It's also a very personal one for me: I studied chemistry and was always in the gender minority. To be honest, I never gave it much thought. However, when some of my female colleagues became pregnant, I realised that this can lead to temporary absence from the lab in scientific subjects due to workplace regulations. However, the increasing number of part-time positions in companies and academia certainly helps to improve the work-life balance. In this context, there is also FemSpin, a project that is trying to find out how we can support women in academia.
How realistic is it to be a part-time researcher or entrepreneur?
It is crucial to create a good, supportive environment. There are certainly
Even today, there are still people who are convinced that researchers or companies have to work 100%. I personally believe that you can do everything in parts. And I know a lot of colleagues who work part-time but give 200% to the company in the time they are there.
What can the Innovation Office at the University of Bern do specifically to support young female researchers and entrepreneurs in their work?
The "Women who start up" event series was a really good starting point for us to get a feel for what people need and want in this process. We have taken this feedback on board and designed the second edition of the series, which starts in autumn, accordingly. On the subject of role models, we at the Innovation Office are quite unintentionally a role model: my colleague Elsa is a physicist, Jennifer is a business administration student, Sara is a psychology student and our research assistant, and I myself am a chemist. So there is female empowerment in the Innovation Office. And we also expose ourselves time and again, going to events and giving talks. It's about living this role model function and not just talking about it.
"Female empowerment is therefore taking place in the Innovation Office."
Dr Stefanie Dobitz
What successes can you already look back on?
We have grown together well as an Innovation Office team. We all had different backgrounds and ideas about how an Innovation Office works at the university. We then developed our vision together over the course of 2022: A thriving ecosystem shaping our society of tomorrow - something I am personally very proud of. Since our own foundation, we have been able to support many projects at the University of Bern and Inselspital, with three start-ups (2021) and successful funding from BRIDGE and Innosuisse. We also awarded the first round of UniBE Venture Fellowships, actively supporting four projects with CHF 100,000 each and our expertise. In the area of promoting women, we received a lot of positive feedback for the "Women who start up" series. Everyone who was there felt very well taken care of. We are therefore also looking forward to the launch of no. 2 in September 2023.
Dr Stefanie Dobitz is Innovation & Startup Advisor for Health, Medicine and Life Sciences at the University of Bern and Inselspital. She actively supports researchers and students in their first steps towards becoming future entrepreneurs. Previously, Stefanie led an international sales team for a Swiss contract manufacturer (CDMO), supporting the pharma and biotech industry. Stefanie holds a PhD in Organic Chemistry from ETH Zurich and a CAS in Innovation Management.
Equal Opportunities Department
The University is committed to promoting equal opportunities and equality for women and men and all genders, endeavours to remove barriers to access and promotes the compatibility of work and care responsibilities.
Innovation Office
The Innovation Office was founded in September 2021 to promote a dynamic culture of innovation at the University of Bern. The Innovation Office sensitises and supports students, researchers and professors with regard to new ideas and inventions, thereby strengthening the transfer of innovative research to the economy and society.
FemSpin
This joint project of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ)
and Lausanne (EPFL), the Paul Scherrer Institute, the Universities of Zurich, Basel, Bern and Geneva and the Universities of Applied Sciences of Western (HES-SO), Southern (SUPSI) and Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW) aims to promote equal opportunities in the area of spin-off activities by placing a special focus on women.