Petra Skiebe-Corrette holds a doctorate in neurobiology and completed her habilitation (German equivalent of associate professor) in 2002. She is director of NatLab, an informal science laboratory at the Freie Universität Berlin, which offers both primary school pupils and high school students the opportunity to perform up-to-date inquiry-based experiments in biology and chemistry. She also initiated a network of informal science laboratories in the German states Berlin and Brandenburg (“GenaU”). She serves on the board of the LernortLabor Bundesverband der Schülerlabore e.V., an association supporting informal science laboratories within Germany.

Skiebe-Corrette has been the German representative for four European Union grants:  ‘SciencEduc’ in 2004-2006, ‘POLLEN’ in 2006 -2009, ‘Fibonacci’ in 2009-2013 and ‘Sustain’ in 2013-2016, all of which have the goal of promoting inquiry-based science education within Europe. In order to support inquiry-based science education within primary schools on a long term basis, TuWaS! (Technik und Naturwissen­schaften an Schulen, Technology and Science in Schools) was founded in 2007 as a cooperation between the Freie Universität Berlin and the Berlin Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Currently, TuWaS! is serving over 200 schools in four different German states (Berlin, North Rhine-Westphalia, Brandenburg, Hamburg). In North Rhine-Westphalia, TuWaS! was developed with and financed by the Chambers of Commerce of Cologne and Bonn Rhein-Sieg. Skiebe-Corrette also served on the advisory board of the National Science Resources Center (now the Smithsonian Science Education Center) in Washington DC (2009-2012) and has been invited as an expert into the IAP SEP Global Council (2013-present) and into the Working Group on Science Education of ALLEA (2013-present).