Berfin Göker is one of the best

Chamber of Industry and Commerce honors particularly successful apprentices

Berfin Göker, a former apprentice at the Max Planck Institut für Kohlenforschung, has been honoured by the Mülheim-Essen-Oberhausen Chamber of Industry and Commerce as one of the best in her year. This is not the first time that the young woman has been awarded for her outstanding work.

2082 apprentices have completed their training in Mülheim an der Ruhr, Essen and Oberhausen this year and passed their exams at the Chamber of Industry and Commerce (IHK). 148 of them, about five percent, passed their exams with the grade A. At a ceremony at the Ruhr Tech Kampus in Essen, the IHK honored these young people for their success. One of these young people is Berfin Göker, a newly qualified chemical laboratory assistant at the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung.

Particularly in the age of artificial intelligence and digitalization, good vocational training is especially important, emphasized Hartmut Buhren, deputy president of the IHK. “People remain at the heart of every successful enterprise,” he said to the graduates. “You are the future, you are driving our economy forward,” he explained.

Berfin Göker, who was accompanied by her family and Laila Sahraoui, head of apprenticeship at the institute, will remain at the MPI as a technician in the HPLC department. Incidentally, the IHK award is somewhat of a hattrick for the young woman: last year she received the Ernst Haage Prize from the Mülheim Chemistry Campus. And this year, she received the Max Planck Society's trainee award.

Berfin Göker has a health impairment. She is hearing-impaired and has faced many hurdles that people without this impairment don't know about, both during her school days and at training and at the MPI, but she has nevertheless achieved outstanding results.