Diversity: DTU Compute increases the focus on women and foreign researchers

Among those who complete a master's degree in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics), there is a noticeable disparity in the number of women compared to men who choose to pursue careers in academia. This "leaky pipeline" of female talent represents an untapped potential, critical for Denmark's ambition to secure a position as one of the world's leading nations in STEM disciplines in the future.

Consequently, VILLUM FONDEN, Novo Nordisk Foundation, and IS IT A BIRD have invited university environments to develop concrete strategies for supporting diversity within their specific research settings. This effort has led to the establishment of a series of collaborations known as 'Living Labs', encompassing a total of 13 research environments across the country, one of them at DTU Compute where, in addition to concentrating on women, the work also includes the foreign PhD students and employed researchers. Another one is at DTU Bioengineering

The goal of 'Living Labs' is to investigate various strategies for providing Danish STEM environments with well-defined ideas and recommendations to enhance diversity and inclusion. The ideas might include initiatives aimed at reshaping maternity and family support systems, emphasizing the recruitment and retention of female staff, or addressing broader cultural shifts within research settings.

The expectations are high at the Villum Foundation and the Novo Nordisk Foundation:

"The number and diversity of the applications that IS IT A BIRD has received shows that the need for change is widely recognized in the university environment, and this bodes well for the development work that the project's Living Labs will embark on."

It is the research environments themselves that will be developing the initiatives and driving the change processes. At the same time, the team from IS IT A BIRD will follow the Living Labs closely by monitoring and evaluating the initiatives to document what it takes to create lasting positive change within diversity in STEM research.

Compute's target groups resemble each other

DTU Compute has around 50 percent of employees from all over the world, and at the department, you can see that there can be a lot of overlap between being a woman and a researcher and coming from a country other than Denmark concerning 'fitting in' with the stereotype by a researcher, explains Head of Department Jan Madsen:

"The goal is that the knowledge we acquire through the project must be used to initiate concrete measures to increase the proportion of female researchers. We also hope to be able to use the collected knowledge to learn more about how we can create a different story about being a researcher in the STEM subjects; a story that can be used in, among other things, recruitment, onboarding, and other relevant places.”

The project idea was developed by DTU Compute's special diversity group, which is part of the department's environmental work. The diversity group focuses on making the workplace even more inclusive through advising the department management, holding seminars, and developing projects.