An independent jury, consisting of the members of the WomenPower Congress Advisory Board, has selected Dr. Christina Franke as this year’s Engineer Powerwoman. This decision was publicly announced at the opening of the WomenPower career congress on 21 April in Hannover. Previously, the jury had nominated a total of three excellent female STEM experts for the prestigious award.
Every year, Deutsche Messe presents the Engineer Powerwoman Award to an expert who has made a special contribution to the scientific and technical disciplines. This year’s award honors Dr. Christina Franke, a woman who is advancing her career in an industrial enterprise. She joined Bosch Rexroth in Stuttgart in June 2022 as head of development in the Assembly Technology business unit.
After studying design and production engineering at the University of Saarland and spending a year abroad in Sweden, Dr. Franke worked as a research assistant at the Chair of Production Engineering from 1999. In December 2003, she completed her dissertation in the field of “Process Chain Planning in the Digital Factory” at the University of Saarland. In June 2004, she started her professional career at the Bosch Group as a trainee, quickly taking on managerial tasks in manufacturing and quality assurance. From 2011 to 2015, she helped set up manufacturing at the Powertrain plant in Wuxi, China. This was followed by a stint as an advisor to Bosch executive management. In 2017, she took over as Head of Technical Project Purchasing for Commercial and Off-road Vehicles for Powertrain Solutions in the Central Purchasing Division of the Bosch Group. From mid-2019 onward, she was responsible for engineering in the Research and Advance Engineering corporate sector, where her tasks included innovation work in the areas of Industrie 4.0 and electromobility.
The award was presented by jury chairperson Prof. Barbara Schwarze from the Competence Center Technology-Diversity-Equal Opportunities (kompetenzz), based in Bielefeld, Germany. “The WomenPower Congress Advisory Board is thrilled at the outstanding quality of the proposals from companies and research institutions for the Engineer Powerwoman 2023 award,” she declared. “The selection of the winner, Dr. Christina Franke, from three highly interesting nominated experts impressively demonstrates the potential of women working in technically-oriented companies. The award is intended to honor the winner and encourage her on her path, as well as to encourage companies to make significantly more women visible in their technical careers.”
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