Approximately twenty year 11 to 13 students attended a preparatory course for natural science and technology degrees in Berlin at the beginning of August as part of the “Talent Take Off – First Steps in Higher Education” program. Apart from technology workshops and laboratory experiments at the Technical University, the one-week course also included visits to two Fraunhofer institutes.

“Talent Take Off” is a new network for promising high school and university students and is part of the National Joint Initiative for Women in MINT Professions, funded by the German federal ministry of education and research (BMBF). MINT stands for mathematics, informatics, natural sciences and technology.

On the 7^th August, at the end of their stay in Berlin, the group visited Fraunhofer IZM to learn about opportunities for studying assembly and interconnection technologies. Following a general introduction by Head of Marketing Harald Pötter, the students visited a number of the institute laboratories. While some of the students were introduced to the finer points of optical interconnection technology by IZM scientists, others learned about Fraunhofer IZM’s mounting technologies, using its flip chip line, and even had the opportunity to try out the equipment themselves.