DTU professor Marie Münster receives IDA's equality award

Two of the great trends of the time – the green transformation of society and equality – form the focal point of Marie Münster's career. For this reason, Marie Münster receives the Danish Association of Engineers, IDA's, equality award, the Agnes and Betzy prize this year.

Marie Münster has contributed widely to promoting gender equality through her position as one of the few female professors at DTU. In addition, since 2009 Marie Münster has been a member of the Advisory Board for DTU's Master in Sustainable Energy and has been course director for several of the major courses in this master's programme. Marie Münster has spearheaded the establishment and running of an annual alumni seminar on the master's programme, and more than half of the PhD students Marie Münster has been the main supervisor for have been women.

Marie Münster regularly appears in the media in the debate on the green transition. Partly to add nuance to the debate and make her knowledge and expertise available, but also to inspire other women to join the public debate on the green transition.

Marie Münster points out that the engineering sector could gain a lot by having a more diverse workforce and working with other disciplines to show how technology, sustainability and human considerations interact and are crucial to the success of the green transition.

Or, as she said in an interview with IDA earlier this year:

"I think engineering has more to offer than many women realise. For example, many women think sustainability is important, so if the engineering industry were better at marketing itself to women and showing that there are good and meaningful jobs where you don't just sit around doing formulas alone, it could expand the pool of qualified people and create more diversity. I can only see it as a win-win".

In the fight against climate change, investing in the right technologies and the necessary infrastructure is becoming increasingly important. But which technologies should we invest in? And how do we make the most of our infrastructure? These are some of the questions that have been at the heart of Marie Münster's research over the past 15 years.

Her research concentrates on mathematical models that can point out how we should prioritise in relation to future energy from an economic and climate perspective. The focus has been on how sector coupling can contribute to a cost-effective green transition, as well as on the production of green fuels, Power-to-X, waste utilisation, and the link between electricity, heat, gas and transport.

Marie Münster has been project manager on a number of domestic and international research projects in collaboration with companies and authorities with funding from the Innovation Fund, H2020 and private foundations, and in 2020 she received the Ingeborg and Leo Dannin Grant for Scientific Research for her research in the field.