For talented, creative, and passionate young female researchers working in the field of active and interactive materials
The WIMA is a young scientist award launched in 2021 initiated by DWI's working group "Equal Chances and Diversity", specifically targeting female scientists from the research field of active and interactive materials.
The aim is to specifically support women in their early academic careers and provide them with a platform to increase their visibility.
We are honored to host our 6th WIMA edition in Aachen this year.
The final of the award will take place on-site in Aachen on 23 September, 2026.
This is made possible by the generous financial support of the ALTANA Group, a global leader in specialty chemicals for innovative technologies, the Association of Friends of DWI and the Leibniz Research Alliance Leibniz Health Technologies.
In the end, three winners will be chosen and honoured with prize money of 15,000 EUR in total: 1st place 10,000 EUR prize money and 2,500 EUR for each of the 2 runner-ups.
The jury will be chaired by:
Petra Severit
Petra Severit, chemist by training, is a passionate, authentic and truly international leader with over 20 years of diversified background in engineering, R&D and business in global executive positions in the automotive supplier industry and the chemical industry. She has R&D management experience in product development, innovation, analytical laboratories, basic research and application development. Additional to the technical background she has work experience in strategy, strategic sourcing, business development and as managing director, as well as board member.
Laura Rijns
Laura Rijns, WIMA winner of 2025, is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), Institute for Complex Molecular Systems (ICMS) in the lab of prof. Patricia Dankers, developing soft & supramolecular bio-electronic materials: from fundamentals towards functional electric modulation of neural tissue down to single-cell precision. Laura studied Biomedical Engineering (BME) at TU/e (BSc 2017, MSc 2019), including internships at the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) with prof. Songi Han (2017) and at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) with prof. Maartje Bastings (2019). Laura obtained her PhD ‘cum laude’ (2023) with prof. Patricia Dankers and prof. E.W. (Bert) Meijer in BME, focused on supramolecular hydrogels as extracellular matrix mimics for tissue engineering applications.
Laura performed her postdoctoral training at Stanford University with prof. Zhenan Bao, in close collaboration with prof. Karl Deisseroth, in bio-electronics and (opto)genetic engineering, aiming to improve the communication between electronic materials and neural tissue.
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Laura De Laporte
Laura De Laporte is one of the founders of WIMA, which was established in 2021. Her research focuses on the development of biohybrid and bioinspired materials for advanced medical applications, for example to replicate the complex structure of natural tissues. To achieve this, she is working on new synthetic material concepts and new methods of manufacture, combining engineering, chemistry and biology to design biomaterials that control and direct the interaction with cells. Her team designs low-invasive, polymeric regenerative hydrogel therapies, consisting of nano –and micron-scale building blocks that orient after injection to repair anisotropic tissues, such as the spinal cord. In addition, dynamic hydrogels are created for drug delivery and to study mechanobiology.