Gabriele Schrag has been committed to equal opportunities and diversity for many years: first at the former Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the TUM and later at the TUM School of CIT – including as a contact person for sexual harassment and sexualized violence, as a gender equality officer, as a member of the talent management and diversity (TMD) team responsible for establishing the TMD unit within the school, and as a member of the TUM Talent Management and Diversity Board during the school’s founding phase.
Empowering Women in Electrical Engineering and Information Technology
Gabriele Schrag has always been a strong supporter of female students in electrical engineering and information technology (EI) – a field in which women are severely underrepresented. For example, she supports the student initiative “EI Girls,” which was founded in 2022 by one of her students. It offers current and former female electrical and information engineers at the TUM the opportunity to get advice for their studies, share job opportunities, and connect with others. Gabriele Schrag provides the premises and infrastructure at her professorship for this purpose and regularly attends the networking meetings herself.
She also encouraged some participants to apply for the “Women in CIT Diversity Award”. This in turn enabled them to attend a conference of the international Society of Women Engineers (SWE) in Munich in 2024 and inspired the women to organize panel discussions at the TUM and to network with other organizations beyond the university. Today, the “EI Girls” are a TUM student club that connects more than 200 women across all career levels—from first-semester bachelor’s students to doctoral candidates to working electrical and information engineers—impressively underscoring the multiplier effect of Gabriele Schrag’s commitment to increasing the proportion of women in engineering.
Promoting Equality in Science and Technology
In addition to her university commitments, Gabriele Schrag also serves as the gender equality officer for the EU research project “Listen2Future,” which aims to contribute to a healthier and more secure society by developing new and smallest microphone and ultrasound sensors for examinations in industry and medicine. Apart from her scientific work within the project, she supports the implementation of measures to promote gender equality in science and technology. In an episode of the project’s own podcast series, for example, she talks about persistent gender barriers in the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, mathematics), reflects them on the example of Listen2Future and brings the issue to the attention of the public beyond the project’s dissemination.
Gabriele Schrag, Professor of Microsensors and Actuators at the Department of Electrical Engineering at the TUM School of CIT, received this year’s award at the TUM Award Ceremony on November 13, 2025, in Munich.
Since 2015, the Angela Molitoris Diversity Award has been presented to TUM employees who are particularly committed to promoting women and strengthening diversity in science and teaching. The award is named after the first female in-house lawyer and Senior Executive Vice President of the TUM, Angela Molitoris (1912–2002).