82 high school girls chose to spend three days during the autumn holidays in Lyngby to learn more about the technologies of the future. The girls came from as far away as Aalborg, Ærø and Esbjerg.
During the autumn break, DTU held an IT camp for girls and, as something new, an engineering camp to make the girls aware of the opportunities that engineering education opens up. Among other things, by showing them how an education in engineering and IT can help make a difference - both for other people and society as a whole.
The three-day camps included both theory, presentations from DTU's lecturers and various female role models, and practical hands-on assignments.
At the engineering camp, topics ranged from sustainable product design, electromagnetism and sustainable energy design to robotics.
One task was to use DTU's Fablab to build a speaker - thus using both electromagnetism and mechanical technology in practice. Another task was to charge batteries and perform calculations to optimize solar cells, another to program robots to perform dance moves.
At the IT camp, which is still going on, there is a focus on how to use math, programming and logic to solve problems and make things happen - in the real world. Here the girls have to program their own computer game and experience how one with math can get a robot to recognize people as well as understand, and answer questions.
The two camps are part of DTU's efforts to inspire more girls to apply for the technical educations and thus help to increase diversity, e.g. in fields of study in mechanics, electrical technologies and IT, which still have more male than female students.
