SIEMENS

The EU’s “Green Emotion” project is very important to physical chemist Heike Barlag. She enthusiastically explains how the project will standardize electric mobility in Europe. Its members intend to establish a system that will allow electric vehicles in Europe to recharge their batteries across the whole continent thanks to standardized voltages, power sockets, and software. After a while, Barlag reveals that she is actually the chief coordinator of this extensive undertaking, which is being funded by the EU as part of the seventh Research Framework Programme. Barlag will work with 42 project partners from 12 countries over the next four years and manage the EU’s €24 million funding contribution. Siemens is the largest project partner — and the company has established an interdisciplinary team that is participating in seven of the project’s 11 work packages, which address guidelines for charging stations, organizing demonstration projects in several model regions, and developing infrastructure.

Barlag’s management assignment has taken her away from her favorite place — her research laboratory. She loves to assemble lab equipment and test rigs. “I’ve always been interested in science and technology,” she says. When Barlag was just 12, she took apart the hub gears on her Dutch bicycle — and then reassembled the complex gearbox with little outside help. But these days she hardly has any time to pick up a screwdriver herself. In June 2010 she left her research unit at Siemens Corporate Technology (CT) to become a senior project manager at Siemens Energy Sector in Fürth near Nuremberg.

She now manages several publicly funded electric vehicle charging infrastructure projects. She continues to work closely with the CT researchers who are developing the charging units for electric vehicle power stations. The objective here is electromagnetic induction charging, which uses direct current rather than alternating current — and could reduce charging times to just a few minutes. Barlag’s work requires organizational talent and the ability to skillfully direct very diverse teams. Through her projects she works closely with coworkers in Germany and Denmark, researchers at universities, developers in the automotive industry, and engineers at energy supply companies. “Green Emotion” is by far the biggest project Barlag is involved in at the moment.

Different Perspectives. Heike Barlag, who is 41, respects her new assignment as a project coordinator. “I almost feel a little too young for it,” she jokes. But she looks forward to the challenge, and she knows exactly what she needs to do to make complex projects a success. “The most important thing is communication, of course,” she explains. An intense exchange of ideas and information is crucial, especially at the beginning, in order to make sure the results fit together at the end. Barlag describes her strategy as follows: “You have to make sure everyone involved really understands what they’re supposed to do.” That’s why she continually checks with participants to make sure no misunderstandings remain. She is very good at getting right to the heart of things, and has never had any language difficulties with her European partners because “anyone participating in an EU project speaks English.”

As a coordinator, Barlag also relies on her own extensive technical knowledge. She studied chemistry at the University of Münster and specialized in electrochemistry when she worked on her PhD. She also knows a lot about programming. Her first job when she started working at Siemens CT in Erlangen in 2001 was to develop fuel cells. “That was really basic research — I built electrodes, put in component production orders, and tested fuel cells in the lab,” she recalls. In 2004 she moved to the Biosensor unit. She was eventually promoted to project manager there, and this enabled her to gain initial experience in leading interdisciplinary groups, which now helps her to overcome typical barriers. “Physicists, chemists, biologists, and engineers often have different perspectives on things,” she says. Even an elementary concept like electrical voltage can mean something different to an electrochemist than it does to an electrical engineer, as Barlag soon found out. “I wanted to understand how engineers think,” she explains. “So I had to learn the language of electrical engineering, so to speak.”

As a woman, Barlag has often felt a bit exotic throughout her career. However, she doesn’t believe her gender has been a disadvantage — even though she did encounter some prejudices in the beginning. In fact, her father, himself an engineer, wasn’t too pleased with her choice of profession, and her dissertation advisor predicted that all of his female students would end up working in libraries. “Here at Siemens, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a man or a woman or where you come from,” Barlag says. Sometimes, however, someone will call her office and think she’s a secretary rather than the project manager — but Barlag doesn’t take it personally. “People still have to get used to women in management positions,” she says.

Barlag’s humor and her open and uncomplicated demeanor definitely contribute to the success of her projects. And, as she has learned, when working in international groups, it’s also important to show respect for the professional knowledge of your partners, says Barlag. Ideally, collaboration across borders, disciplines, and companies should be a very enriching experience. “If you can combine the skills and knowledge of everyone involved, you’ll get better results than if each person works alone,” she says.

Barlag believes research without borders will become more and more important in the future. “We make our money mostly with hightech products whose development is so complex that companies can no longer do it by themselves,” she says. Electric mobility is the best example of how international collaboration is indispensable, according to Barlag, who says, “It’s the only way to get a market big enough to ensure that the development work pays off.” Inner-European borders make no sense when it comes to infrastructure projects. “Nobody is going to want to stop at a border because they can’t recharge their car on the other side,” Barlag says. In addition, international collaboration saves money because it allows uniform standards for new technologies to be developed at a very early stage.

Barlag is also seeing European borders disappear in her private life. Her husband spends half his time in Nuremberg and the other half in Warsaw, where he has been managing a company for the last ten years.